South Korea Breaks Filibuster Record Fighting New Surveillance Bill (thestack.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Lawmakers in South Korea's National Assembly have broken the global collective filibuster record in its determination to defeat a new anti-terrorism bill which they believe threatens personal privacy for the country's citizens. 38 liberal members of the National Assembly spoke for a total of 193 hours in a collective effort which began on February 23rd and ended today, with the passing of the bill by 160 parliament members, with one 'no' and apparent abstention from the filibusters.

Comments

tldr

[Noah Haders]

An admirable gesture, but the surveillance bill eventually passed near unanimously, 160-1 (every country has a bernie sanders). Also notably, their NSA was caught "packet tapping" on gmail accounts, and has been accused of manipulating the 2012 election. Another reason to not have electronic voting! (there are so many reasons).

Re:tldr

[vux984]

An admirable gesture, but the surveillance bill eventually passed near unanimously, 160-1

The South Korean National Assembly has 300 seats, 7 of which are vacant, so 293 votes available I assume.

It was not "uninamous"; in the sense that it had overwhelming support. It had 54%.

The article appears to state that the 38 members who filibustered abstained. I am not sure why they didn't vote no?? I know next to nothing about south korean's political system.

But that's at LEAST 39 against the bill.

And where were the other hundred votes? Did after the long filibuster they all just left? And the government in power (with 157 seats, just whip the party to sit through until it was passed, along with a few independents? of which there are 6)

By the time the vote came to pass was it just the yes-block left in the room, and the 38 guys abstaining?

In any case, framing it as 160-1 is lying with statistics. :)