Flawed nominees pass scrutiny while ruling party reduces confirmation hearings to hollow exercise
Rep. Yong Hye-in's resignation as nominee for Minister of Gender Equality and Family is ultimately the result of Cheong Wa Dae's vetting failure.
Yong did not even make it to the National Assembly's confirmation hearing. The ruling Democratic Party of Korea did not even schedule a confirmation hearing for her, and its leader, Kim Min-seok, reportedly went so far as to send his chief of staff to urge her to step down.
Her firm stance that she would retain her seat as a sitting proportional-representation lawmaker while also serving as a minister — an unprecedented move in Korea's constitutional history — appeared highly self-serving to the public.
Furthermore, new evidence emerged suggesting that she had turned the party she belonged to into a personal fiefdom, intensifying the criticism against her.
Although the ruling party moved to contain the fallout by having her resign voluntarily, the ultimate responsibility lies with Cheong Wa Dae, which failed to anticipate that Yong would insist on holding both a ministerial post and her proportional-representation seat in the National Assembly.
Kim Seung-won, the nominee for justice minister whose confirmation hearing begins today, is also a vetting failure on par with Yong. Nevertheless, the Democratic Party of Korea appears to be doing everything it can to protect him.
Party leader Kim Min-seok fueled public anger by saying of Kim Seung-won's nomination, "The more I look into it, the more I believe it was a good appointment. I will stand by it."
The level of public criticism of Kim Seung-won is such that some argue he should be subject to a special counsel investigation rather than a confirmation hearing.
However, Kim Min-seok effectively made clear that the party's position was to adopt the confirmation hearing report on Kim Seung-won, regardless of critical public opinion.
Kim Seung-won's confirmation hearing is expected to be a hollow exercise that will effectively deprive the public of the opportunity to vet the nominee. That is intended to shield him from mounting public criticism. The Democratic Party rejected all the witnesses requested by the opposition People Power Party for the confirmation hearings of all the nominees, not just Kim Seung-won.
Seo Young-kyo, a Democratic Party lawmaker who chairs the Legislation and Judiciary Committee, came up with the sophistry that a normal confirmation hearing is one in which the minister nominee himself serves as the witness and no other witnesses are present.
The close relationship between Kim Seung-won and a broker surnamed Yang, the relationship among Kim, Yang and the judge who at the time rejected an arrest warrant for the largest shareholder of a company developing a new drug, and stock-price manipulation linked to clinical trial approval were all potentially fatal liabilities for Kim’s qualifications to serve as a minister.
Yet Kim passed the vetting process and was nominated as a ministerial candidate. These were all matters that Cheong Wa Dae should have been able to find out.
If Cheong Wa Dae failed to uncover these flaws in the vetting process, it was incompetent; if it knew about them and still nominated Kim, it is guilty of dereliction of duty and of arrogance and self-righteousness toward the public. It must have a system in place to select qualified candidates and filter out potential risks through cross-checking.
The ruling party's use of its parliamentary majority to push through confirmation hearings in which it rejected the opposition's requests for witnesses and allowed the nominees to do nothing but offer their own defenses is an affront to the public. If an unqualified person becomes a minister through a meaningless confirmation hearing, the public will be the only ones to suffer. Confirmation hearings, too, must restore their original function of assessing nominees' qualifications and moral character.
khnews@heraldcorp.com
