PRIME TIME NEWS 22:00 Rival parties reach breakthrough on pension reform discussions
PRIME TIME NEWS 22:00 Rival political parties are on track to pass legislation on the future of the nation′s public pension system... following marathon negotiations. Anthrax in Korea. The Pentagon says live samples of the biological agent were accidentally sent to an American air base here in South Korea. Military officials say 22 people may have been exposed. And Korean health authorities are under fire for allowing a suspected MERS patient to leave the country for China. This as the seventh case of the potentially deadly virus is confirmed on the peninsula. Stay tuned... for these stories and more. Rival political parties are continuing marathon negotiations into the night at the National Assembly. At the center of the political deadlock are reforms to the public pension system. Hello and welcome to Prime Time News... on this Thursday May 28th. I′m Paul Yi. And I′m Hwang Ji-hye, thanks for joining us. Title: Rival parties reach breakthrough on pension reform discussions We start off at the National Assembly,... where last-minute negotiations are underway on legislation... to overhaul the public pension system... among other pressing issues. We now connect to our National Assembly correspondent... Park Ji-won... for more details. Jiwon,... we′re finally seeing a breakthrough on reforms for the debt-ridden civil-servant pension plan. How did it play out? Yes,... the two rival parties finally agreed to pass the long-stalled pension reform bill at the full assembly session tonight,... which is set to get underway soon. The agreement came during a floor leaders′ meeting between the two parties which lasted for hours on this Thursday... focused on a number of issues linked to the public-servant pension reform plan. And now it seems it will finally pass through the assembly,... along with some 50 other pending bills. Jiwon, today′s full assembly was originally scheduled at 2 PM,... and we′re heading closer towards midnight now.... There have been numerous talks up to this point... so what′s delayed the afternoon session? Well... From the start of today′s discussions,... the two parties were actually in agreement on the pension reforms,... both the civil-servant pension reforms... and plans to strengthen the much-larger national pension service...for the general public,... after 8 hours of marathon talks on Wednesday. However, it was their differences over the Sewol-ho ferry ordinances which have stalled talks up to this point. The main opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy had demanded the inclusion of rules to implement the Sewol-ho ferry special law,... as a package deal with those pension reforms. They argued that according to the parties′ May 10th agreement,... the focus of the current extraordinary assembly session was to resolve pension issues AND improve Sewol-ho ferry ordinances. Bereaved families of the ferry victims and civic groups have raised concerns about the investigation committee′
