Presidential aide steps down over book defending Yoon’s martial law
President Lee Jae Myung on Tuesday requested the National Assembly reconsider and forward the personnel hearing report of the scandal-ridden gender minister nominee to him, expressing his willingness to continue with the appointment despite public backlash.
According to presidential spokesperson Kang Yu-jung in an afternoon briefing, the president asked the Assembly to submit Gender Minister nominee Kang Sun-woo's report to him by Thursday, after the rival parties failed to reach a consensus over her nomination last week.
The Assembly's Gender Equality and Family Committee, a 17-member parliamentary standing committee comprising lawmakers of both the ruling and main opposition parties, failed to adopt the report after a tense confirmation hearing on July 14.
"We have decided Thursday is the deadline for (the report) to wrap up the appointment (of the Cabinet) by the end of this week and swiftly achieve stability of the management of the state affairs," Kang Yu-jung told the briefing.
Kang Sun-woo has been accused of mistreating staff members at her legislative office in recent years as a two-term Democratic Party lawmaker. She is alleged to have replaced staff members 46 times over just five years and made demands of them outside of their legislative support duties, such as asking them to fix her toilet, according to reports. The nominee said at her hearing that the correct figure was 27, not 46.
Lee also requested the Assembly reconsider and forward the reports for Defense Minister nominee Ahn Gyu-back, Veterans Affairs Minister nominee Kwon Oh-eul and Unification Minister nominee Chung Dong-young, by the same deadline.
Submission of a personnel hearing report to the president is mandatory for a Cabinet nomination. Yet while Cabinet ministers are required to undergo a parliamentary confirmation hearing, their appointment is not contingent on the Assembly's approval.
If the National Assembly fails to submit the report by the initial deadline — which in Kang Sun-woo's case was Saturday — the president can request the filing within a designated period of up to 10 days. If the Assembly does not uphold the set timeframe, the president can legally proceed with the appointment unilaterally.
In recent weeks, several of Lee’s picks for Cabinet members and aides have been mired in controversies.
Early Tuesday, Kang Jun-wook resigned merely a week after President Lee Jae Myung had appointed him to the newly established position of presidential secretary for national integration, the presidential office said.
The president accepted the resignation after considering “the public opinion that (Kang Jun-wook’s beliefs) do not align with the governing philosophy and principles of the administration,” the spokesperson added.
Public concerns were stoked after it was found that Kang Jun-wook, who had been tasked with unifying a politically divided country, expressed opinions aligned with far-right ideologies through social media and a book he published in March defending former President Yoon Suk Yeol’s failed martial law bid.
“(Yoon’s) martial law was imposed as an act of rebellion as he could no longer bear the violent abuse of power of the majority party,” he wrote in the book, referring to the Democratic Party of Korea, which holds a firm parliamentary majority. He added that the public’s view of Yoon’s martial law as an act of insurrection is the result of manipulation of opinion by the Democratic Party.
A Facebook post uploaded by Kang Jun-wook around 2018 also reflected pro-Japan views, as he supported the 1910-45 Japanese colonial rule over Korea as a way of modernization, while undermining the forced nature of Japan’s wartime military sexual slavery.
“The attitude of the Japanese people is too respectful to have recklessly taken away anyone from the streets, including comfort women,” he wrote, using the euphemistic term for Korean victims of sexual slavery. “I believe that the colonial rule modernized (Korea) and do not believe in forced labor.”
Far-right scholars tend to deprecate independence fighters against Japan in the early 20th century as terrorists, based on a view that Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule helped Korea modernize.
The presidential office said it plans to name another conservative figure who shares the Lee administration’s political philosophy as Kang Jun-wook's successor.
On Sunday, Lee decided to withdraw his nomination of Education Minister Lee Jin-sook, following allegations of academic plagiarism and of breaking the law to send her daughter to study overseas.
The former nominee had apologized for sending her daughter overseas in 2007, when she was a ninth grader, against Korean law that stipulates compulsory education through middle school, which ends after ninth grade. However, she denied allegations of academic plagiarism.
mkjung@heraldcorp.com
