On August 9, 2019 South Korean President Moon Jae-in conducted a major reshuffle, including the replacement of eight cabinet ministers and the appointment of a new ambassador to the USA.
Replacing ministers is nothing new for Moon Jae-in – this kind of rotation is part of South Korea’s political culture, in which ministerial appointments are seen as a step up the career ladder – and on this occasion several of the ministers were removed from their posts so that they could take part in the elections to the national assembly. All the comments in the South Korean media about the former ministers being replaced by experts and experienced state servants, creating an atmosphere of a “working government” therefore seem rather off the mark: the average time that a minister spends in office remains still only just over a year.
The most interesting of the new appointments, at least for the present writer, is the designation of Cho Kuk, a Professor of Law at Seoul State University who until recently was Secretary to the President for Civil Affairs, for the post of Minister of Justice. Cho Kuk was appointed Presidential Secretary in May 2017, serving for two years and two months, a long tenure by South Korean standards. The only person to hold that post for a longer period was Moon Jae-in himself, who served for two years and four months under President Roh Moo-Hyun.
His responsibilities included staffing policies, fighting corruption amongst senior civil servants and the reform of the investigation authorities, including the public prosecutor’s office.
Readers may remember that, as Secretary to the President for Civil Affairs, Cho Kuk was subject to continuous attacks from the opposition, attacks which cannot simply be dismissed as due to rivalry between the country’s political factions. Cho Kuk’s name was frequently heard in connection with the Kim Tae-woo affair (Kim Tae-woo was accused of organizing the illegal surveillance of offices and ministers by a specially established inspection bureau, overseen by Cho Kuk), as well as other controversies, including the failure to do proper background checks into the persons recommended by the Blue House for ministerial positions, and a scandal involving one of the police officers on his staff, who turned out to be a criminal who was a suspect in a ballooning drugs and corruption scandal. Cho Kuk was vehement in his opposition to university professors retaining their academic position when they went into politics, even though he himself continued to hold the position of Professor of Law at Seoul State University while serving as Secretary to the President for Civil Affairs.
In July 2019 Cho Kuk was removed from the position of Presidential Secretary following his outspoken social media comments in which he described Japan’s export controls as a form of economic retaliation for the South Korean High Court’s ruling on the payment of compensation to victims of forced labor during the Second World War.
But it would be wrong to assume that this removal means that Moon Jae-in has washed his hands of this important political figure. Far from it: one of the Korean President’s most trusted advisers, he has been designated for a new, high-profile and challenging job. As minister Cho Kuk is expected to see through a number of projects that we have discussed here on more than one occasion, including:
- reforming the public prosecution service, transforming it into a dependable structure that is fully accountable to the government;
- separating the investigative functions of the public prosecutor and police: with the latter effectively obtaining the right to lead investigations, while the powers of the former are significantly curtailed;
- and obtaining parliamentary approval of a draft law on a special investigative body responsible for corruption cases involving high-profile civil servants, which will report directly to the President.
These challenges require a person who is personally loyal to Moon Jae-in, whose attempt to bend the third political power, the judiciary, to his own will meets very considerable opposition, as evidenced by two court decisions, largely unnoticed outside the country, which, in the view of the present author, must have been painful blows to Moon Jae-in.
The first of these was the release on bail of 300 million won ($255 000) of Yang Sung-tae, who was to be convicted as an example to the nation and morally discredited, a symbol of court corruption under former president Park Geun-hye. The former Chief Justice of South Korea was released after 179 days in custody. It is true the conditions of his release mean that he is effectively under house arrest: he must stay in his own home and may not communicate with anyone connected with the charges he is facing. He needs to get permission going on any journey.
The second blow was the failure of his attempt to increase Park Geun-hye’s term of imprisonment. The prosecution requested an extension of her sentence on the grounds that it was too lenient, but the Seoul Appeals Court in fact reduced her sentence. Park Geun-hye, who served as president from May 2013 to September 2016, was imprisoned on rather murky corruption charges: allegedly she had received illegal payments from the South Korean intelligence services. The charges were proved in relation to her assistants, who, in exchange for repeated payments over several years, hid information from the President, keeping her in an “information cocoon” so the intelligence services could manipulate her by knowingly providing her with false information. But it was not proved that Park Geun-hye had known about the scheme – she was convicted based on the assumption that “she must have known, and chose to cover things up, so she is guilty”.
In 2018 the Seoul Central District Court sentenced her to six years in prison and a fine of 3.3 billion won, but at the appeal level her sentence was reduced to 5 years in prison and a fine of 2.7 billion won ($2.3 million).
However, let us return to Cho Kuk. The post of Minister of Justice provides good opportunities for further promotion: Hwang Kyo-ahn, for example, became Prime Minister after serving in this position. It is therefore very significant that Cho Kuk has recently become more active in the political and social arenas, including sharing his views on current issues on social media – in fact some observers have suggested he may be considering running for president in the next elections.
The Conservative opposition has protested against his designation as Minister of Justice, seeing this step as tantamount to a declaration of war. However, the protests are affecting not only the Conservatives: at exactly the same time, a number of scandals concerning Cho Kuk and his family have erupted. It turns out that his son has dual South Korean and US citizenship, and that large bribes were paid so that his daughter could get into Korea University’s Faculty of Medicine – even larger than the bribes paid for Choi Soon-sil’s daughter.
As a result the Conservatives are gaining in popularity, especially among young people: South Korean society is extremely competitive and these corruption scandals are a rather sensitive issue. After all, we are talking about the daughter of the man who is in charge of “reforms to increasing transparency and fairness”.
Cho Kuk has denied all the allegations, dismissing them as “fake news” and he has criticized the media for invading his family’s privacy and promised to explain everything in the upcoming hearings, but, at the moment, his statements are widely viewed as transparently hypocritical. In a recent opinion survey, almost 50% of respondents considered Cho Kuk to be an unsuitable choice for the post of Minister of Justice, and a petition demanding that he be stripped of his degree has been placed on the Blue House’s website. Even some lawmakers from the Government party have started expressing reservations – in the words of Deputy Park Yong-jin, if the candidate’s explanations fail to satisfy Korean society, then the President has no choice but to act accordingly.
All this puts Moon Jae-in in a VERY awkward position. If he continues to promote Cho Kuk’s candidacy then the protests will only increase: the situation of Moon Jae-in is uncomfortably reminiscent of the scandals that triggered the fall of Park Geun-hye and which Moon Jae-in derived great profit from. Yes, he could go ahead and appoint Cho Kuk without parliamentary approval, but that would leave him open to severe criticism. And if he abandons one of his most trusted allies, especially one who is threatened with social ostracism, he would effectively be telling his team: “I’ll drop you in a moment if there is a change of circumstances”. Worst of all, his supporters would leave him like rats escaping from a sinking ship – and they would doubtless be able to reveal lots of interesting secrets.
So despite the growing calls for him to retract Cho’s designation, Yoon Do Han, Senior Presidential Secretary for Public Communication has stated that “these suspicions are not founded on facts, and are exaggerated”, and that all the allegations being voiced in the media will be dealt with in the hearings. It remains to be seen whether this scandal can be brushed under the carpet as easily as the Kim Tae-woo affair or Cho Kuk’s comments on social media.
Konstantin Asmolov, PhD in History, Leading Research Fellow at the Centre for Korean Studies of the Institute of Far Eastern Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
