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President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol’s latest Cabinet picks (left to right, top to bottom): Kim In-chul for deputy prime minister and education minister; Park Jin for minister of foreign affairs; Kwon Young-se as minister of unification; Han Dong-hoon for justice minister; Lee Sang-min for minister of the interior and safety; Han Wha-jin as environment minister; Cho Seung-hwan as minister of oceans and fisheries; Lee Young as minister of SMEs and Startups; and Kim Dae-ki to be presidential chief of staff. (Yonhap News)

In his announcement of Cabinet selections on Wednesday, President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol named Judicial Research and Training Institute Vice President Han Dong-hoon, one of his closest associates, as his nominee to serve as his administration’s first minister of justice.

The Democratic Party attacked the choice as a “declaration of the privatization of prosecutorial authority,” with Han being “given the roles of both minister of justice and senior presidential secretary for civil affairs.”

Yoon has now completed his selections of ministers for 16 ministries, with only the Ministry of Employment and Labor and the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs remaining. His choices include Kim In-chul, former president of the Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, as a nominee to serve as deputy prime minister and minister of education.

Yoon commented on his selection of Han as justice minister during a press conference that day at the offices of his presidential transition committee in Seoul’s Tongui neighborhood.

“I judged him to be the right person to modernize the administration of judicial affairs and establish a judicial system that meets the global standard,” Yoon commented.

“I don’t think this is in any sense an ‘exceptional’ appointment,” he added. Yoon did not reply when asked whether Han was one of his closest associates.

Han has been an associate of Yoon’s within the prosecution service, investigating cases related to the Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye administrations as third vice director during Yoon’s tenure as head of the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office and assisting him as chief of the anti-corruption and violent crime division of the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office when Yoon was prosecutor general.

In a February press interview where Yoon alluded to the possibility of investigating “deep-rooted vices” under the Moon Jae-in administration, Yoon likened Han to an “independence activist.”

Analysts read Yoon’s decision to name Han as his justice minister — without having a separate position of senior presidential secretary for civil affairs within the Blue House — as signaling his intent to use Han as a means of directly supervising the country’s judicial and prosecutorial organizations.

“This is a full-scale, overt declaration of political retaliation to a public that wants unity,” said Democratic Party floor leader Park Hong-keun.

“[Yoon] is openly declaring to the public that he intends to use one of his associates to privatize prosecutorial powers and turn this into a ferocious ‘republic of prosecutors,’” he added.

Observers also described the move as Yoon’s way of pushing back against the Democratic Party’s attempts to enact legislation fully stripping the prosecutors of their investigation powers.

Yoon waved off the fears, saying he was “not concerned.” But Justice Party spokesperson Jang Tae-soo said, “It’s dismaying that he seems to be focusing less on his responsibilities as president than on playing the part of the prosecutor general warning of a full-scale war with the Democratic Party.”

“This is a betrayal of the public’s trust,” he said.

Yoon’s other nominees included lawmaker Park Jin to head the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; lawmaker Kwon Young-se to head the Ministry of Unification; former Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission Vice Chairperson Lee Sang-min to lead the Ministry of the Interior and Safety; Korea Environment Institute honorary research fellow Han Wha-jin to lead the Ministry of Environment; former Korea Institute of Marine Science & Technology Promotion Director Cho Seung-hwan to serve as head of the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries; and lawmaker Lee Young to lead the Ministry of SMEs and Startups.

With the latest picks showing the same overrepresentation of male Seoul National University (SNU) alumni in their 60s that had been commented on in Yoon’s first round of selections, observers said the President-elect had failed to introduce more diversity in terms of generations, genders, and regions. The eight nominees in the second round of picks had an average of 59, with four of them in their 60s and three in their 50s.

At 49, Han Dong-hoon was the only nominee in their 40s.

While Yoon did present two female nominees in Lee Young as Minister of SMEs and Startups and Han Wha-jin as Minister of Environment, that still brought the total number of women in his Cabinet to three out of 16 ministers, including Minister of Gender Equality and Family nominee Kim Hyun-sook from the first round of selections.

In terms of alma maters, the elite SNU had the largest representation with seven nominees, followed by Korea University with four and Kyungpook National University with two.

Seven of the nominees hailed from the Yeongnam (Gyeongsang provinces) region, with one each from Gangwon Province, Daejeon, Jeju, and North Chungcheong Province. The only nominee from the Honam (Jeolla provinces) region was Lee Sang-min, who is from North Jeolla.

Yoon named Kim Dae-ki, a former Blue House policy office chief, to be his chief of staff. Former People Power Party lawmaker Lee Jin-bok is being floated as a potential pick for senior presidential secretary for political affairs.

By Jang Na-rye, staff reporter

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