'Mobilizing state institutions to complete a perfect crime'

Lee Yong-cheol, nominee for minister of justice. [Cheong Wa Dae]
Lee Yong-cheol, nominee for minister of justice. [Cheong Wa Dae]

The People Power Party on Saturday urged President Lee Jae Myung to withdraw his nomination of Defense Acquisition Program Administration chief Lee Yong-cheol as the new minister of justice, calling the pick a display of "personnel tyranny" that ultimately amounted to a "Seongnam cartel" appointment.

Chief Spokesperson Park Sung-hoon said in a statement that day the nomination reflected "an anti-constitutional scheme to mobilize all state institutions to complete the president's perfect crime."

Park said the sole purpose of handing a cabinet post to someone widely criticized as the "hidden architect" of the Daejang-dong allegations was to assign that person to quietly engineer the withdrawal of criminal charges — turning the Ministry of Justice into "the president's bulletproof defense counsel" and erasing his legal risks entirely.

Floor Spokesperson Choi Su-jin also issued a statement, saying the intent behind the appointment — timed to coincide with the forced passage of a special prosecutor act targeting fabricated indictments — "could not be more brazen." Choi described the nominee as a Seongnam insider best positioned to carry out a presidential withdrawal of charges, calling the move "the completed version of a bulletproof scenario to pressure the prosecution office with a coerced special prosecutor and wipe away the president's crimes."

Choi added that nominating the DAPA chief — who has handled only notarial work with no hands-on prosecutorial experience — to lead the Ministry of Justice "at a critical moment when the new prosecution office needs to take root defies all logic." Choi said "a country where a president who is a defendant in the Daejang-dong case hands the entire administration of justice to someone implicated in the same allegations is not a normal rule-of-law state."

Rep. Yun Sang-hyeon wrote on Facebook that the nominee came from the same law firm, Saegil, as President Lee, served on Lee's transition committee when Lee won the Seongnam mayoral race in 2010, and later headed the Seongnam Industry Promotion Foundation — making the nominee "a textbook Seongnam-line figure" from whom "it will be hard to escape criticism of recycling insiders."

President Lee nominated Lee Yong-cheol for the justice minister post on Friday. The nominee is an alumnus of the same law firm, Saegil, as the president. He joined Lee's transition committee after Lee won the Seongnam mayoral election in 2010 and went on to serve as head of the city-affiliated Seongnam Industry Promotion Foundation in 2011.


cook@heraldcorp.com