hankyoreh

President Yoon Suk-yeol speaks at the World Gas Conference in Daegu on May 24. (Yonhap News)

After South Korea’s Ministry of Justice announced the establishment of a team that will screen nominees for public office on Tuesday, the Hankyoreh has learned that the final stage of vetting will be overseen by the secretary to the president for civil service discipline. That means that the entire process of nominating and vetting officials under the Yoon administration will be handled by veterans of the state prosecution service, including Justice Minister Han Dong-hoon, who is widely regarded as Yoon’s right-hand man, and Lee Si-won, the newly appointed secretary to the president for civil service discipline who was implicated in a trumped-up espionage case.

The Justice Ministry gave advance notice in the government gazette on Tuesday about a partial revision to the enforcement rules governing the personnel organization of the ministry and bodies under it. The rules are being revised to set up a team to manage information about personnel.

“The Ministry of Personnel Management’s authority for collecting and managing personnel information, including information about nominees for public office, is also being entrusted to the president’s chief of staff and to the justice minister,” the Justice Ministry said.

In short, the enforcement rules are being revised to empower the Justice Ministry to vet nominees for public office. The personnel information management team, which will report directly to the minister, will consist of 20 people including no more than four prosecutors.

After the Justice Ministry’s personnel information management team screens nominees for public office, the office of the secretary to the president for civil service discipline will run a final check.

A senior administration official told the Hankyoreh that “the civil service discipline secretary will review the findings of the detailed background check [by the Justice Ministry] for its final assessment. By getting more people involved with vetting personnel, we hope to prevent the concentration and abuse of power.”

While the presidential office stresses the decentralization of power, the end result is that veterans of the prosecution service are now in charge of all aspects of personnel appointments under the Yoon administration. Yoon may have abolished the post of the senior secretary to the president for civil affairs, but that secretary’s former duty of screening personnel now appears to be in the hands of Han Dong-hoon, one of Yoon’s closest allies, and other former prosecutors.

Furthermore, Yoon has appointed Bok Doo-kyu, former secretary-general at the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office, as senior secretary to the president for personnel affairs, and Lee Won-mo, former prosecutor at the Daejeon District Prosecutors’ Office, as personnel affairs secretary. Lee headed up a controversial investigation into the Wolsong No. 1 nuclear reactor.

In effect, former prosecutors are now in charge of both recommending people for public office (posts related to personnel affairs in the presidential office) and vetting those recommendations (the Justice Ministry and the secretary to the president for civil service discipline).

Some have grumbled about the fact that a certain employee with the National Intelligence Service (identified as “K”) who worked under the senior secretary to the president for civil affairs under former President Park Geun-hye was involved in sketching out how personnel vetting will be handled under the Yoon administration.

“Since ‘K’ had experience working for the presidential secretary for civil affairs, that individual was dispatched to Yoon’s presidential transition committee to provide administrative support for setting up the personnel vetting system and organizing the staff,” said a source with the People Power Party.

When prosecutors investigated the influence-peddling scandal that brought down Park Geun-hye, they learned that “K” had provided then-Senior Secretary for Civil Affairs Woo Byung-woo with the information needed to draft a report about transferring power in the Samsung Group.

That same investigation turned up a text message that “K” sent to Jang Choong-gi, former head of Samsung’s Future Strategy Office. “I hope I won’t be just another name you flip by in your rolodex, but someone who will leave a lasting memory as a hometown friend,” “K” wrote in the message.

Yoon said during a presidential debate at the Kwanhun Club last December that he would “screen [personnel] using investigative resources and all available information,” prompting suspicions that he was toying with the idea of drawing upon information kept at the National Intelligence Service.

By Seo Young-ji, staff reporter

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]