South Korea’s Ruling Party Rams Through 2 Reform Bills : Asia: The main opposition says it will stage nationwide rallies to denounce the government and may boycott National Assembly sessions.

SEOUL — In a move considered certain to exacerbate already intensifying political unrest, President Roh Tae Woo’s ruling party Friday rammed through the National Assembly two bills it described as reforms of authoritarian laws left over from his predecessor’s regime.

With opposition politicians occupying the rostrum, Speaker Park Joon Kyu stood at the entrance of the assembly hall, announced the introduction of the bills and declared them passed--all within one minute.

Kim Dae Jung’s opposition New Democratic Party declared that it would end moderation in its criticism of the government.

“Our party has patiently concentrated our struggle within the National Assembly, but from now on, we will stage nationwide rallies and denounce the Roh government and the Democratic Liberal Party,” it said.

It also said it would boycott any National Assembly session over which Park presides.

The action came as a transport worker set himself afire during a protest rally at a college campus in the southwest provincial capital of Kwangju. Identified as Yoon Yong Soo, 20, of Taejon, he was the fifth protester to resort to self-immolation since police beat to death a 20-year-old college student during a demonstration on April 26. Three of them have died, and one other person, a labor activist, was killed in a plunge from a hospital where he had been in police custody.

Yoon was reported in critical condition at a hospital in Kwangju.

Failure of Roh to act on the legacies of authoritarian rule represented by the National Security Law and the Police Law had spurred charges that the former general was utilizing security-related laws to suppress dissent--even before five riot police officers beat the student to death last month.

The Democratic Liberal Party failed to take any action on a third controversial law regulating the operations of the Agency for National Security Planning, the former Korean CIA. Surveillance of people’s political activities made the agency a symbol of authoritarian rule.

Earlier, Roh’s party had promised to amend all three of the laws.

The amendment to the National Security Law eliminated one major repressive provision by decriminalizing the failure to report knowledge of contacts by others with Communist North Korea. It also limited punishment for unauthorized contacts with North Korea by specifying that acts such as praising or communicating with North Koreans would be penalized only if they were committed with the intent to endanger national security or undermine South Korea’s “democratic system.”

Kim’s party had insisted that all references to North Korea or other “anti-state organizations” be eliminated from the law. In the past, governments were accused of arbitrarily branding political critics as “anti-state” to squelch dissent.

Designed to ensure political neutrality by police, the amendment to the Police Law will establish a five-member commission to supervise personnel and fix police policies. Kim had insisted that two of the members be appointed by the Korea Bar Assn.

His party is the only substantial opposition group in the National Assembly.

Speaker Park said that failure to work out compromise revisions with Kim’s party left the ruling group with no alternative but to act on its own.

Earlier, at a ceremony dedicating a dam in Chollanam province, Roh, in a reference to self-immolations by dissidents, accused them of using human life “as a tool for radical political struggle” and said that he would turn a deaf ear to demands for the resignation of his prime minister, Ro Jai Bong, and the Cabinet.

“An extremely small number of radical forces are wantonly trampling legal order. Such behavior will no longer be tolerated,” he said.

The president spoke a day after more than 50,000 people demonstrated in Seoul in the largest outpouring of protest since he took office in February, 1988. The rally was called to protest the amalgamation a year ago of his ruling party with the forces of two of his rivals in the 1987 presidential election.