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Amid a furor over the alleged contamination of U.S. military bases being returned to South Korea, the National Assembly environmental committee on Friday urged the government to release classified documents on its agreement with Washington or face legal action.

Environmental worries have mounted as the U.S. Forces in Korea (USFK) returns 66 bases to South Korea as part of the U.S. military's global realignment plan. The South Korean government has withheld the texts of the turnover agreement, citing "national safety."

In their on-site inspection of three U.S. bases north of Seoul on Thursday, lawmakers of the parliament's Environment and Labor Committee found serious contamination, including oil flowing under the ground and chemical equipment dumped without proper processing.

A parliamentary hearing is to be held June 25-26 to examine the issue.

"The government has never submitted enough documents for us to know the levels of contamination. It's just groundless to say the documents should be withheld for national safety," said Kwon Hyun, an assistant to Rep. Woo Won-shik, a member of the committee. The lawmakers were to visit Defense Minister Kim Jang-soo and Foreign Minister Song Min-soon separately later in the day to press for the release of the classified documents needed for the hearing. If the documents are not provided by Tuesday, they will take the case to court, accusing the ministers of violating an act dealing with testimony and appraisal before the National Assembly.

Out of 66 U.S. military bases to be returned to South Korea, 23 have been handed over so far. Once their control is transferred, all cleanup costs are paid by Korean taxpayers.

In the parliamentary hearing set for June 25-26, the lawmakers will call on the government to toughen its inspections of the U.S. cleanup process before taking over the bases, they said in a statement.

Under the Status of Forces Agreement, a legal protocol for the U.S. military stationed in Korea, the USFK should clean up contamination that poses a "known, imminent, and substantial endangerment to human health" before handing over land and facilities it has used for decades. In an auxiliary deal, the USFK also agreed to remove underground storage tanks and air-conditioning chemicals, as well as lead and copper left at former firing ranges. Some 29,500 American soldiers are stationed here, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War.

Environmental activists claim that the USFK did not take appropriate decontamination measures, while the government says it couldn't delay any further the agreed-upon return of the U.S. bases.

SEOUL, June 15 (Yonhap News)