Confirmation hearings expected Monday
2026.03.22 13:58
| Rep. Park Hong-keun (left), a lawmaker who was nominated as the budget minister, and Hwang Jong-woo, nominee for oceans minister (The Korea Herald/Yonhap) |
Confirmation hearings for two minister nominees — for the Budget Ministry and Oceans Ministry — are set to kick off Monday, starting another round of bipartisan clash over the personnel picks.
While minister-level officials are required to undergo parliamentary hearings, the president can push ahead with appointments regardless of the result of the hearings.
The hearing for the budget minister nominee — four-term Democratic Party of Korea lawmaker Rep. Park Hong-keun — will be held at the meeting of the Finance, Economy, Planning and Budget Committee on Monday at 10 a.m.
Park would become the first minister of the newly established Budget Ministry, a body dedicated to the fiscal planning of Asia's fourth-largest economy, carved out of the Ministry of Economy and Finance in January.
Park is a career politician who formerly chaired the National Assembly's Special Committee on Budget and Accounts in 2021. He also led a planning division chair in the State Affairs Planning Committee, the de facto presidential transition team that operated until August last year, and is considered a key figure behind fiscal authorities' separation from tax authorities.
Since the split, however, the Budget Ministry's top post has remained vacant, after President Lee Jae Myung withdrew his previous pick, Lee Hye-hoon, amid mounting controversies concerning personal wrongdoings revealed during her confirmation hearing, about a month after the nomination.
In a written response to inquiries from budget committee lawmakers, Park raised a need for a supplementary budget to preemptively cushion the economic impact on South Korea from crisis in the Middle East.
"Amid lingering Middle East uncertainties that affect the global economy in terms of energy supply, maritime logistics and financial market, our industries exporting to Middle Eastern countries are directly impacted, while small company owners, farmers and fishers are facing mounting pressure," Park noted in response to inquiries from Rep. Kwon Young-se of the People Power Party.
"Fiscal action should be taken to preemptively tackle the spillover effect on the South Korean economy, in order not to let our economic recovery give way to crisis," Park added, hinting that the fiscal support through the extra budget should be selectively targeted to the marginalized.
Park, however, cautioned that it would be "undesirable for the extra budget to be used as a routine option for national fiscal management."
Before his nomination, Park was a Seoul mayoral race hopeful.
Meanwhile, Oceans Minister nominee Hwang Jong-woo, a career civil servant, will appear for a hearing at a meeting of the National Assembly's Agriculture, Food, Rural Affairs, Oceans and Fisheries Committee on Monday.
Before the presidential nomination, Hwang served in key posts in the Oceans Ministry, including one to handle the ministry's planning and coordination. Hwang was also director of the Korea Ocean Foundation when he was nominated.
The ocean minister post has remained vacant since Rep. Chun Jae-soo's resignation from the post in December, amid allegations he had received illegal funding from the Unification Church. Chun is now seeking the Busan mayoral post in the upcoming June election.
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