Moon faces calls to sack aides over nomination fiasco

President Moon Jae-in speaks at the star of his weekly meeting with senior presential secretaries at Cheong Wa Dae, Monday. Yonhap

By Kim Yoo-chul

President Moon Jae-in is facing growing calls to sack aides who are deemed responsible for the recent minister nomination fiasco.

The opposition parties are demanding the dismissal of senior secretary for civil affairs Cho Kuk and senior secretary for personnel affairs Cho Hyun-ok after two of seven people nominated to Cabinet posts withdrew Sunday over alleged ethical lapses

Of the remaining five, the main opposition Liberty Korea Party (LKP) rejected the nominations of Kim Yeon-chul as unification minister and Park Young-sun as SMEs and Startups minister, citing their ideological bias and lack of qualifications.

Cheong Wa Dae, however, indicated that Moon will not accept these demands.

“We want unification minister nominee Kim and SMEs and Startups minister nominee Park to voluntarily step down,” LKP floor leader Na Kyung-won said. “We are worried about Kim's pro-North Korean views and Park's continued refusal to submit documents for personal verification.”

A Cheong Wa Dae official said President Moon will go with his unification and SMEs nominees as planned.

“Moon also has no plan to change aides,” the official said.

A survey shows the ongoing controversy over Moon's nominations is having little impact on his approval ratings.

Moon's job approval rating inched up as of last week partly helped by growing expectations of his upcoming summit with U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington, next week. In a weekly survey by Realmeter, 47.7 percent of people said they approved of Moon's efforts, up 0.6 percentage points from a week earlier.

“Cheong Wa Dae is seeing little impact on the President's approval rating from the nomination-related issues as it appears the announcement of the summit prevented a further decline,” said the official.

Cho has managed to keep the position from the beginning of Moon's presidency.

Cho Kuk, senior presidentialsecretary for civil affairs, arrives at Cheong Wa Dae to attend a weekly meeting of senior presidential secretaries chaired by President Moon Jae-in, Monday. Yonhap

Unification minister nominee Kim, an academic and former chief of a research institute, is expected to play a key role to bolster inter-Korean relations after the failure of last month's summit in Hanoi between the U.S. and North Korea.

Mentioning his previous dovish stance toward North Korea-related issues, opposition lawmakers are claiming thatKim is not qualified to handle inter-Korean affairs, officials said.

At a confirmation hearing at the National Assembly, Kim said it was necessary to utilize a North Korea strategy of intensively developing the national economy as a means to step up the denuclearization process. He said the concept of denuclearization includes “all nuclear weapons and all existing nuclear programs.”

Nominees for minister's positionsare required to pass the Assembly's “non-binding”confirmation hearings.

In a weekly meeting with senior presidentialsecretaries, Moon said there had been attempts to push back against moves for peace on the Korean Peninsula. “If the ongoing talks aimed at bringing a lasting peace on the peninsula fail, then the situation will be getting worse,” Moon said at the start of the meeting, according to Cheong Wa Dae press pool reports.

Moon has been vigorously pushing for an early resumption of frozen inter-Korean projects as he seeks to engage Pyongyang, but doing so will fall foul of sanctions currently placed on the North.