Lee Hae-rin is a City Desk reporter at The Korea Times, covering social issues, tourism and taekwondo. She is passionate about speaking up for the rights of minorities, including women, LGBTQ+, people with disabilities and animals as well as discovering the latest makgeolli trend in town. Feel free to reach her at lhr@koreatimes.co.kr.
President-elect nominates labor, agriculture ministers
Labor minister nominee Lee Jung-sik, left, and agriculture minister nominee Chung Hwang-keun / Yonhap
By Lee Hae-rin
By Lee Hae-rin
President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol finalized Cabinet nominations for 18 ministerial positions, Thursday, by nominating Lee Jung-sik as Minister of Employment and Labor and Chung Hwang-keun as Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs.
Introducing Chung as a career government official, Yoon called him an architect of the country's agricultural policies. “He is the right person to resolve the problems facing farmers and the agricultural sector of the country and cultivate the industry to become competitive as a future growth engine,” the president-elect said.
Chung joined the agriculture ministry in 2002 in the agricultural policy division. After serving as spokesperson for the ministry from 2008 to 2010, Chung led the policy division for agriculture and fishery until 2012.
In 2013, Chung joined the presidential transition committee to then-President-elect Park Geun-hye as an adviser and served as presidential secretary for agriculture, food and rural affairs until 2016.
Before being nominated for the position of agriculture minister, Chung had been holding a visiting professor position since 2018 in the Department of Agricultural Economics at Chungnam National University.
For the labor minister post, Yoon nominated Lee Jung-sik.
“Lee is highly valued as a labor management expert who approaches industrial relations problems reasonably,” Yoon said. “Based on his extensive field experience and expertise, Lee is the right candidate to establish industrial relations where the value of labor is rightfully respected.”
Lee said he is willing to reach out to unionists to solve problems. “It seems that the unions have been very negative about (the president-elect) from the onset of the presidential election. It may require certain conditions to meet, but I think meeting and talking with people is the only way to solve labor issues,” he said during the press conference.
Lee is a unionist having been involved in the field for 30 years. Born in 1961 in Jecheon, North Chungcheong Province, Lee, secretary general of Korea Labor and Employment Service, joined the Federation of Korean Trade Unions in 1986 after graduating from Seoul National University's Department of Economics.
Lee was also one of the first expert advisers on the labor management reform committee, and served as a policy assistant to the Ministry of Construction and Transportation and as an adviser at Samsung Electronics.