Tag: politics

President Moon has to get someone appointed as the Justice Minister to slow down all the corruption investigations into the Blue House:

Choo Mi-ae, a five-term ruling party lawmaker, has been nominated for the position of justice minister, Cheong Wa Dae announced Thursday amid keen attention to her role in the South Korean government’s push for prosecution reform.

President Moon Jae-in picked Choo to fill the post that has been vacant for several weeks since Cho Kuk stepped down in the face of state prosecutors’ probe into alleged irregularities involving his family. (……..)

For Moon, the choice of Choo is viewed as a card to counter the prosecution’s thinly veiled pressure on Cheong Wa Dae with intensive probes into high-profile corruption suspicions, involving longtime confidants to the president, under the leadership of Prosecutor General Yoon Seok-youl.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but this is what the Joong Ang Ilbo is speculating she will do once in charge of the Justice Ministry:

Speculation is running high that Choo will shake up the prosecution as soon as she becomes minister. As of now, the prosecution is carrying out at least three investigations that involve allies of President Moon. Probes are ongoing into an allegation that the Moon Blue House carried out a political operation to influence the 2018 local election; the suspicious suspension of a Blue House probe into Moon’s associate Yoo Jae-soo; and the continuing investigation of corruption allegations involving Cho Kuk and his family. 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link, but she is essentially expected to help cover up the corruption allegations surrounding the Blue House.

The fact that Korean conservatives were able to mobilize so many people to protest against ROK Justice Minister Cho Kuk forced President Moon to have him resign:

 In an unexpected move, Justice Minister Cho Kuk offered to resign Monday amid an ongoing probe into corruption allegations involving his family.

“I judged I should not add a burden to the president and the government regarding my family affairs. I think the time has come for me to step down for the successful completion of prosecution reform,” he said in a statement.

“I was mere ‘kindling’ for reforming the prosecution. My role as ‘kindling’ has come to an end.”

President Moon Jae-in formally accepted Cho’s resignation offer, Cheong Wa Dae said. The president signed a related document at 5:38 p.m., Cheong Wa Dae spokesperson Ko Min-jung, said.

Yonhap

The fact that he resigned I think also may mean there must be some good evidence against him to substantiate the corruption charges. It will be interesting to see if prosecutors continue to go after Cho Kuk and his family on the corruption charges now that he has resigned.

1/The important part is not in the headlines. Moon held a cabinet meeting at KIST, and Cho Kuk was there. Moon & Cho were pressuring KIST to say Cho Kuk's daughter did an internship there, when she didn't. Cho's daughter claimed she was an intern there…https://t.co/3HLgzX52J4

— Tara O (@DrTaraO) September 11, 2019

To be fair President Moon’s job approval rating is still pretty high considering all the scandals and poor economy:

Public sentiment toward President Moon Jae-in is becoming noticeably negative in light of various setbacks at home and abroad, with negative assessments of his job performance exceeding 50 percent, for the first time since he took office in May 2017, in a weekly Realmeter survey.

The survey published Monday showed that 50.4 percent of respondents thought Moon was doing a bad job in the third week of August, marking a 4.1 percent increase from the previous week. The pollster said the biggest reason for this was the escalating political row over one of his most trusted aides, Cho Kuk. The rival parties agreed to hold a two-day confirmation hearing from Sept. 2 for the justice minister nominee who is at the center of a widening scandal over allegations of corruption and unethical behavior involving himself and his family members.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

Cho Kuk was a mber of Sanomaeng (Socialist Workers League of Korea). Its goal was to overthrow #SouthKorean system for workers' socialist revolution by armed uprising. Cho said he's not ashamed of it. Moon designated Cho to be the Justice Minister.https://t.co/uA6GW88ejv

— Tara O (@DrTaraO) August 22, 2019

It is pretty clear that the Blue House is going to take the Kang Kyung-hwa approach to getting President Moon’s Justice Minister nominee approved:

Cho Kuk promised Friday to donate all his family’s scandal-plagued wealth to society in an attempt to keep his justice minister nomination from being derailed.

Cho, however, remained silent about suspected academic fraud and other scandals surrounding his daughter, which have become the focus of public disquiet over his controversial nomination. 

“My family and I have been loved by society, but I failed to have the humility to look back on myself,” Cho said in a press conference broadcast live Friday afternoon. He promised to quickly donate his family’s investments in a private equity fund and its ownership of a private school foundation to society at large. 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link, but the current ROK Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-hwa had similar ethical issues as Cho and made face saving public statements like Cho is now making to get approved.

However, Cho’s ethical lapses are even worse than Kang’s:

He made clear, however, that he wouldn’t abandon his nomination to head the Ministry of Justice. “Please trust my sincerity and watch me till the end,” he said. “I will work with a humble attitude.” 

Despite media reporting on suspicious wealth management, Cho insisted the family never used illegal means. While promising to donate the controversial family money and school foundation, Cho gave no explanation about any specific allegation.  

After reading the brief statement about his family’s wealth, Cho ended the press conference without taking any questions. Conspicuously missing in his statement was any mention about the most volatile elements of the scandal surrounding his family, which involve his daughter. 

Cho’s 28-year-old daughter, who currently attends Pusan National University’s Graduate School of Medicine, is suspected of having been wrongly cited as the first author of an English-language paper published in the Korean Journal of Pathology in 2008 and using that accomplishment to gain admission to Korea University in 2010. 

The professor in charge of the controversial paper admitted Thursday that he had given special treatment to Cho’s daughter. 

“She was responsible for experiments and editing of the paper,” Chang Young-pyo, a professor in the Department of Medical Science at Dankook University, told the JoongAng Ilbo on Thursday. “I was responsible for data analysis and writing the first draft of the paper. I cannot deny that a favor was given to her by crediting her as the first author.” 

You can read more at the link, but ROK Heads may remember that one of the reasons former ROK President Park Geun-hye was impeached was because the daughter of her friend Choi Soon-sil, received special treatment to get admitted to college as well.

That is what Oh Young-jin writing for the Korea Times says people in South Korea are speculating about:

A look at the participants in the National Security Office meeting presided over by Chung Eui-yong, Moon’s top security aide, does not reveal these elements in play before the GSOMIA decision. But the movers and shakers that led the move were hidden in plain sight, as it was more the action of working-level presidential aides and others outside Cheong Wa Dae that have inherited Roh’s zeitgeist. 

Some argue openly ― and more wonder ― whether the GSOMIA decision is aimed at diverting public attention from the scandal involving the justice minister-to-be regarding a mushrooming body of allegations of unethical, if not illegal, activities involving his daughter, himself and other family members. The revelations are shocking, dumb-founding and despicable to the point that his nomination deserves an immediate withdrawal. 

But speculation appears quite plausible that Moon ditched the military pact to save his apostle, whom he depends on solely to achieve one of his key presidential agenda items ― reforming the prosecutors, an influential group notorious for colluding with power at a given time and thereby hindering the development of the nation’s democracy. 

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but the Justice Minister Nominee Cho Kuk is one of President Moon’s closest friends that he wants put in charge of the powerful Justice Ministry. It is ironic that President Moon came to power due to candlelight protests against the supposed corruption of the Park Geun-hye administration and Moon has done the same thing of appointing people with shady backgrounds to important positions in the government. The negative media is worth it because he trusts these people to forcibly advance his agenda.

Giving the media another bright shiny object to follow could have definitely been part of the timing of the GSOMIA calculus, but I feel they were going to withdraw regardless for a variety of reasons.

A political rival to President Moon has survived an attempt to send him to jail:

A Suwon court cleared Gyeonggi Gov. Lee Jae-myung of all charges of abuse of power and violating election laws on Thursday. 

The Seongnam branch of the Suwon District Court found Lee not guilty on the four charges brought against him. Three were related to spreading false information during election campaigns and one was on abusing of his political power to commit his brother to a mental institution.

Lee, who previously served as mayor of Seongnam and was elected Gyeonggi governor in June last year, was indicted in December. 

Prosecutors accused Lee of using his influence as Seongnam mayor to forcibly institutionalize his now-deceased older brother, Lee Jae-sun, seen to be a political liability, at a mental hospital in the Gyeonggi city in 2012. 

Gov. Lee has also been accused of violating the national election law by making false claims leading up to the local elections last June. 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link, but ROK Heads may remember his wife was also accused of spreading libel against political rivals on Twitter. She was also cleared of defamation charges.

Though Governor Lee had the charges dropped the negative publicity may meet the intent of politically damaging him as a rival to President Moon.

So does anyone think this bill is intended root out corruption or people that don’t agree with the politics of the Moon administration?:

he ruling Democratic Party (DP) decided Monday to fast-track two bills on establishing a special investigative unit tasked with probing allegations of corruption by high-ranking officials.
Earlier in the day, the minor opposition Bareunmirae Party (BP) proposed a separate bill on limiting the authority of the probe unit and fast-tracking both its bill and a relevant measure proposed by it and three other parties last week.
The National Assembly faces heightened tensions as the DP and three minor parties agreed last week to fast-track four bills linked to electoral reform and the establishment of a unit to investigate alleged corruption by high-ranking government and public officials. (………)

The BP bill calls for setting up a panel to review the appropriateness of charges filed by the probe unit, a tool aimed at preventing it from wielding excessive authority for indictment. Under the four parties’ deal, the unit will be able to indict only judges, prosecutors and high-ranking police officers, an institutional tool that can keep prosecutors in check.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.