Lee Yong-cheol, the current head of South Korea's Defense Acquisition Program Administration, was nominated as justice minister Friday, marking his second appointment to a senior government post under President Lee Jae Myung.
Born in June 1960 in Sunchang, North Jeolla Province, the 66-year-old nominee graduated from Yonsei University with a law degree in 1982 and passed the national bar examination in 1989.
Lee's ties to the presidential office date back to the Roh Moo-hyun administration, a previous Democratic Party-led government, when he served as presidential secretary for civil affairs II and later as presidential secretary for legal affairs, beginning in 2003.
He served as a legal adviser to Roh during the former president's 2002 presidential campaign. During Roh's term, Lee played a leading role in establishing the DAPA as part of efforts to reform the country's military procurement system.
He headed a government task force on defense acquisition reform in 2005 and served as the agency's inaugural vice commissioner when it was established in 2006, before resigning about 10 months later.
Lee returned to public office in November 2025, when President Lee appointed him DAPA chief, nearly two decades after he left the agency.
The nominee also has longstanding ties to President Lee, having headed a Seongnam city-funded agency responsible for supporting local businesses beginning in 2011, when the president was mayor of Seongnam.
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