A majority of South Korean ruling and opposition lawmakers...

A majority of South Korean ruling and opposition lawmakers submitted a bill to abolish the death penalty.
A total of 154 lawmakers, including 60 from the main opposition Grand National Party, signed the bill that needs to be approved by the 15-member Legislative and Judiciary Committee and by a majority of the 273-member unicameral legislature.
"It is contradictory to deprive criminals of their lives for punishment because their human dignity and right to life are constitutionally guaranteed," Chyung Dai Chul, a lawmaker from the ruling Millennium Democratic Party, said in a statement.
It is not certain yet whether the bill will become law in the National Assembly as there are many advocates of the death penalty.
The bill aims to replace capital punishment with the sentence "life without parole". Prisoners carrying the sentence would be ineligible for parole until serving at least 15 years behind bars.
In 1999, a bill submitted by lawmakers was scrapped in the legislation process in the face of resistance from death-penalty advocates.Chyung called it an "irreversible global trend" to abolish the death penalty, citing a report released in April by Amnesty International that 108 countries have abolished it, while 87 countries still keep it.
He said South Korean lawmakers will cooperate with lawmakers from Japan and Taiwan in order to press their governments to abolish the death penalty.