People Power Party floor leader Jeong Jeom-sik and Reform Party leader Lee Jun-seok are set to meet for lunch on Tuesday.
According to both parties Thursday, the meeting was arranged at Jeong's initiative.
The two are expected to discuss coordinating their opposition to the Democratic Party of Korea, which has moved ahead with a partial Assembly leadership structure on its own. They are also set to talk over how the conservative bloc in the second half of the Assembly session should respond to legislation the government and ruling party are pushing — including a bill to restrict online speech and a special prosecutor bill to drop existing charges.
Jeong had already reached out to Reform Party leadership on June 15, shortly after taking office as floor leader, calling for a joint response to check the Lee Jae-myung administration — an overture Lee accepted at the time.
The two sides are also expected to explore responses to issues that have recently come to the fore, including the push to abolish supplementary investigative powers and the drive for a special prosecutor probe into the National Election Commission.
However, observers note that full-scale cooperation may face limits, as the two parties have been trading barbs over the controversy surrounding Jung Seok-jun, the former Reform Party candidate for Busan mayor, who was detained on charges of staging a fake attack on himself during the June 3 local elections.
mp1256@heraldcorp.com
