Heads of the ruling and major opposition parties in South Korea said Monday that they made some headway in their negotiations on election rules and other details ahead of next year‘s general election.

Earlier in the day, Kim Moo-sung, chairman of the ruling Saenuri Party, and Moon Jae-in, head of the opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy (NPAD), held a meeting in the southeastern port city of Busan and announced a series of agreements related to election rules before the general election scheduled in April.

The two agreed to draw up the measures necessary to introduce an open primary system based on “secured” numbers, which are meant to hide the actual mobile phone numbers of participants in the candidate-selecting process.

Both parties have been seeking to introduce an open primary in order to better reflect public opinions in selecting candidates, but they have failed to iron out details over how to implement it.

The two also said that they agreed to extend the period for preliminary registration of candidates to six months from the current four, while sharing the view of providing law-based advantages to political novices, women, youth and physically challenged people in the nomination and primary process.

They, however, failed to produce a breakthrough in negotiations over introducing a new proportional representation system and other issues designed to ease decades of politics that have long been driven by regional rivalry, saying that they will hold “more talks” down the road. (Yonhap)