Cabinet Picks Grilled

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The National Assembly has begun confirmation hearings for President Moon Jae-in’s picks to take key Cabinet positions. The nominees to lead the foreign and finance ministries as well as the Constitutional Court have all had to answer some sharp questions about their past.

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Confirmation hearings on the three nominees for top government posts began concurrently at 10 a.m. Wednesday at the National Assembly. This comes in the wake of the previous confirmation hearings on Prime Minister Lee Nak-yeon and National Intelligence Service chief Suh Hoon. The opposition parties raised many speculations regarding the three nominees. The confirmation hearing for Foreign Minister-designate Kang Kyung-hwa focused on her use of a false address to register her daughter for school and tax evasion. Kang sparked controversy after it had been revealed that she did use a false address to send her daughter to a certain school and that she used different explanations for her actions. The Supreme Court justice-nominee Kim Yi-su was grilled over his opposition to the disbandment of the Unified Progressive Party. Meanwhile, Finance Minister-designate Kim Dong-yeon, who caused little controversy before the hearing, also received aggressive questions from the opposition camp regarding new allegations, including his alleged involvement in real estate speculation. The ruling and opposition camps squared off at the confirmation hearings on Wednesday, as the ruling Democratic Party stepped in to defend the three nominees by saying that the speculations surrounding them are not serious enough to regard them as inappropriate.