Tag: Korean Government

It is pretty clear that the political opposition wants to form this committee so they can come up with findings to blame the Yoon administration for the crowd crush tragedy in Itaewon:

The main opposition Democratic Party (DP) and two minor progressive parties submitted a joint request Wednesday for a parliamentary investigation into the Itaewon crowd crush despite opposition from the ruling party.

The DP, the Justice Party (JP) and the Basic Income Party submitted the request to the National Assembly’s Bills Division on Wednesday afternoon, with an aim to have the request reported at a parliamentary plenary session scheduled for Thursday.

“We should clearly determine where the responsibility lies and come up with measures to prevent a recurrence by looking thoroughly into the accident, including its cause and measures taken before or after the tragedy,” the parties said in the request sponsored by 181 lawmakers.

The parties called for forming an 18-member special committee to oversee the probe and look into whether measures by government agencies were appropriate and whether there were attempts to minimize or cover up the tragedy.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but prosecutors already have an investigation going on that has led to a number of arrests and firings already.

This will be pretty significant if the prosecutors succeed in arresting the former ROK Defense Minister over the death of the fishery official by the North Koreans two years ago:

 Prosecutors sought arrest warrants Tuesday for former Defense Minister Suh Wook and former Coast Guard Commissioner General Kim Hong-hee in an investigation into the previous administration’s handling of the 2020 death of a fisheries official at the hands of North Korea.

The two are facing various charges, including dereliction of duty, abuse of power and creating false official documents in connection with the Moon Jae-in administration’s conclusion without sufficient evidence that the fisheries official was killed while attempting to defect to the North.

Critics have accused the Moon administration of drawing the conclusion to curry favor with Pyongyang.

Prosecutors suspect Suh deliberately erased intelligence reports that suggest the official, Lee Dae-jun, did not intend to defect, and ordered officials to write false facts for a report for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Kim — who was responsible for an investigation into the death at the time — is under suspicion of using fabricated facts to conclude that Lee had intended to defect.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

It looks like the lowering of the elementary school age in Korea is no longer going to happen after public protests has led to the resignation of the Education minister:

Education Minister Park Soon-ae offered to resign Monday, just 34 days after taking office, amid criticism she mishandled key school policy proposals, such as lowering the elementary school entry age.

Park has been under pressure to step down after many teachers and parents protested strongly against lowering the school entry age by one year to 5. She has been criticized for announcing the proposal without sufficient preparations, such as collecting public opinion.

Her ministry had also unveiled a plan to abolish foreign language high schools, only to retract it days later.

Should President Yoon Suk-yeol accept the resignation, Park will be the first Cabinet minister to step down since Yoon took office in May.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

This seems like a lot of hyperbole by the Interior Minister:

Interior Minister Lee Sang-min strongly criticized the chiefs of police precincts Monday for their collective action on Saturday against the envisioned launch of a supervisory bureau inside the interior ministry, calling it “an incident akin to a military coup.”

During a news briefing, Lee said Saturday’s meeting of police officials reminded him of the Dec. 12 military coup led by a group of generals that took place weeks after the assassination of President Park Chung-hee in 1979.

“A lot of time has passed since then and we now live in an era when a military coup has become an unimaginable incident. But the fact that armed officials went ahead and gathered despite a warning from their superior and discussed an action against the government is a serious matter,” he said, indicating that the ministry will investigate those involved in the collective action.

The minister’s strongly-worded criticism came days after some 190 senior police officials from across the country responded to calls by Ulsan Jungbu Police Station Senior Superintendent Ryu Sam-young to gather and discuss how to react to the interior ministry’s plan to launch a supervisory bureau to put the police under its control.  

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

I think the Yoon administration needs to be careful with this because what is to stop the Korean left once they are back in power at some point and prosecuting conservative officials for payback. We have already seen them do this at the Presidential level:

South Korea’s state spy agency said Wednesday it has requested formal investigations by prosecutors into allegations that two of its former chiefs mishandled controversial incidents involving North Korea a few years earlier.

The National Intelligence Service (NIS) filed a complaint with the Supreme Prosecutors Office against Park Jie-won for “deleting intelligence-related reports without authorization” in regard to North Korea’s killing of a South Korean fisheries official in 2020.

Park, formerly a longtime lawmaker, is accused of abusing his authority and unlawfully destroying public electronic records during his stint as director of the NIS under the previous liberal Moon Jae-in administration.

In September 2020, Lee Dae-jun, then 47 years old, was fatally shot by the North’s coast guard near the Yellow Sea border between the two Koreas, a day after going missing while on duty on board a fishery inspection boat.

A storm of controversy has stirred up here since the South’s Coast Guard and the defense ministry recently announced that they have not found any concrete evidence backing the probe results from two years ago that the official might have attempted to defect to North Korea.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

The KNPA director was highly criticized by President Yoon after he approved a personnel reshuffle without running it by the President for approval. The KNPA director is a hold over from the prior Moon administration so he was probably going to get changed out anyway:

National Police Agency Commissioner General Kim Chang-yong offered to resign Monday, days after President Yoon Suk-yeol strongly chastised police over a recent personnel reshuffle flip-flopping.

Police released the names of new senior superintendents general a week earlier, only to reverse seven of the selections two hours later. Yoon rebuked police, calling the flip-flopping a “serious disturbance of national discipline.”

The resignation offer also came as police have protested the interior ministry’s plan to establish a “police bureau” to increase its control of the law enforcement agency set to take over greater investigative roles from the prosecution.

“I determined that resigning now would be the best way,” Kim said, offering an apology to the public and policemen for “failing” to safeguard the neutrality and independence of police.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Here is the new Korean ambassador to the United States:

Cho Tae-yong, the nominee for Korea’s ambassador to the United States, has received diplomatic consent ― known in international affairs as “agrement” ― from Washington, according to media reports.

President Yoon Suk-yeol appointed the diplomat-turned-politician as his first ambassador to the U.S. on May 17 and the approval came two weeks after Cho’s nomination. 

It took two months for Lee Soo-hyuck, Cho’s predecessor under the Moon Jae-in administration, to receive the approval of the U.S. government, raising speculation for some at the time that the delayed consent had been due to Washington’s displeasure with Seoul’s decision to end an information-sharing deal with Japan, although the foreign ministry dismissed such conjecture.

Known by those close to him for possessing a balanced mindset as well as expertise in U.S. and North Korean affairs, Cho, 65, served as the first vice foreign minister and the deputy national security adviser under the Park Geun-hye administration. In addition, he was elected as a proportional representative in 2020 on the conservative People Power Party’s ticket, serving on the National Assembly’s Foreign Affairs and Unification Committee and Intelligence Committee. 

Last week, Cho resigned from the Assembly to take on the ambassadorship. 

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

Remember all the naysayers saying how moving the Presidential office so quickly could not be done and was going to cause a security gap? Well it appears all the criticism was overblown and instead it was a lot of people not wanting to go through change:

President Yoon Suk-yeol is expected to move into his newly remodeled presidential office in Yongsan District, central Seoul, as soon as June 19.    
   
The presidential office’s new moniker and emblem will be revealed on the day of the move.   

Since the launch of his administration on May 10, Yoon has been working from a temporary office on the fifth floor of the Defense Ministry building in Yongsan. Remodeling work throughout the 10-floor building is underway, and Yoon will move to the second floor, his permanent office, as soon as it’s complete around June 19 or 20.    
   
The second floor will also have the office of Yoon’s chief of staff, small and large reception rooms and some security services. The third floor will be occupied by presidential senior secretaries, and other floors will be used by the Presidential Security Service, secretariat, other aides and a new public-private committee. The press center is located on the first floor.  
   
The fifth floor office, where Yoon’s summit with U.S. President Joe Biden was held on May 21, will be converted into a multipurpose reception room.   

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.