This year marks the 580th anniversary of the proclamation of Hangeul and the 100th anniversary of Hangeul Day. In light of this, National Assembly Speaker Jo Jung-sik announced on October 2 that he would promote the simplification of difficult legal terms and rarely used expressions in legislation.
On this day, Jo sent a letter to the chairpersons and secretaries of 16 standing committees, urging the need for revising complex legal terminology and providing amendments for 501 laws.
Key revisions include changing '전마용' to '연락용', '제매' to '동생', and '가납' to '임시납부'. Terms like '세이프가드조치', which do not require foreign language usage, will be simplified to '긴급수입제한조치'.
Accordingly, the National Assembly's Legislative Office, in consultation with the Ministry of Government Legislation, has selected 324 legal terms for revision and prepared amendments for the 501 laws containing these terms, organized by each standing committee's jurisdiction. This effort focuses on making expressions that are difficult, overly abbreviated, or unnecessarily foreign more accessible to the public.
Jo stated, "According to Article 1, Section 2 of the Constitution, 'The sovereignty of the Republic of Korea resides in the people, and all power comes from the people.' Therefore, the owners of the law are the citizens. It is the National Assembly's duty to create laws that are easy for everyone to understand."
He added, "There are still many difficult Chinese characters and terms that are not commonly used in our laws, leading to concerns that the laws are not easily readable," emphasizing the need for language simplification.
This year also marks the 20th anniversary of the 'Creating Easy-to-Understand Legislation' initiative. Since 2006, the government, through the Ministry of Government Legislation, has been working to improve lengthy and complex laws to align them with the public's understanding.
* This article has been translated by AI.
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