Another incomprehensible fiasco has hit the new administration, which had already been beleaguered with the belated Cabinet formation.
Hwang Chul-joo, President Park Geun-hye’s nominee to head the Small and Medium Business Administration (SMBA), abruptly quit Monday, saying he couldn’t give up holdings in Jusung Engineering. Hwang, a self-made venture businessman, is the largest shareholder in the semiconductor equipment maker, with a 25.5 percent stake. His shares, together with his wife’s 1.8 percent stake, are worth more than 70 billion won.
Under the Public Service Ethics Act, a high-ranking civil servant owning shares worth more than 30 million won in a company is obliged to sell his or her assets in person within a month or through a blind trust within 60 days because of possible conflicts of interest.
Judging from what he said after stepping down, Cheong Wa Dae may have not explained to him fully about the blind trust introduced in 2005. If not, Hwang may have misunderstood the system, given his remarks that he thought he could put his shares in a blind trust during his tenure and regain them after leaving the post. Anyway, President Park and her aides, especially those in charge of personnel affairs, should be blamed — once again — for poor communication.
The latest appointment flop raises the need to seek improvements in the blind trust system. If the current requirement holds, it appears all but impossible for any self-made CEO to take a public post, and this will make Park’s narrow talent pool smaller still.
More importantly, the fiasco has testified to the Park administration’s amateurish nature, given that the requirement was a basic item that should have been checked by the President’s personnel affairs team in advance. We sympathize with a ruling party lawmaker who lashed out at the absence of a systematic vetting system for senior officials, saying, "The incident was a humiliation to the Park government."
Hwang is the third nominee to withdraw from a high-level government post, following Kim Yong-joon, appointee for prime minister, and Kim Jeong-hoon, candidate for head of the newly created Ministry of Future Planning and Science. At Cheong Wa Dae, five presidential secretary nominees have been replaced without plausible explanation.
Hwang’s withdrawal dented the nation’s first female leader who vowed to be a president for small- and medium-sized firms and reminds us of the urgent need to conduct radical surgery on Park’s secretive and top-down appointment style and loose vetting system. Park must be aware that a string of appointment failures has significantly eroded public confidence in her administration.