The ruling Democratic Party(DP) passed prosecution reform bills out of the National Assembly's Legislation and Judiciary Committee early Wednesday morning despite strong opposition from the main opposition People Power Party(PPP).

The DP, which holds 171 seats in the 300-member parliament, unilaterally approved two bills, both revising the Criminal Procedure Act and the Prosecutors’ Office Act, at a subcommittee of the Legislation and Judiciary Committee at around 7:10 p.m. on Tuesday while the PPP lawmakers walked out in protest.

The ruling party then put the bills to a vote at a plenary meeting of the committee slightly past midnight and passed them in six minutes.

The DP seeks to finalize the passage of the bills as early as Wednesday with cooperation from National Assembly Speaker Park Byeong-seug, who can convene a plenary meeting of the parliament. The PPP plans to block the bills with a filibuster if they are introduced at a full session of the Assembly.

Drafted by the DP, the bills are based on the speaker's arbitration plan, which would further limit the prosecution’s investigative power, currently applied to six major crimes, to two: those concerning corruption and the economy. The DP initially pushed for different versions of reform bills aimed at stripping the prosecution of all its investigative power.

The revised bills also reflected the minor progressive Justice Party’s proposal to continue to allow the prosecution to investigate election-related crimes until the end of this year.

The PPP, which initially agreed on the speaker’s arbitration but backtracked later, has taken issue with the removal of the prosecution’s authority to investigate public officials and election-related crimes.