Seoul, March 2 – South Korean President Lee Jae Myung has nominated a four-term lawmaker from the ruling Democratic Party as the Minister of Planning and Budget, and a former senior fisheries official as the Minister of Oceans and Fisheries, Cheong Wa Dae said on Monday.
Representative Park Hong-keun has been appointed to lead the Ministry of Planning and Budget, while Hwang Jong-woo, chairman of the Korea Maritime Cooperation Center's international cooperation committee, was named to head the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries, Lee Kyu-yeon, presidential secretary for public affairs, said in a briefing, according to Yonhap News Agency.
The nominations came after Lee withdrew his nomination of Lee Hye-hoon as Minister of Planning and Budget in January amid growing controversy over the former lawmaker's alleged misconduct, including suspicious real estate dealings involving her family.
Appointments to the Cabinet are subject to parliamentary hearings but do not require approval to take office.
If confirmed, Park would become the Lee administration's first Minister of Planning and Budget after its establishment this year under a government reorganization plan.
Park, who has served as the chief of the parliamentary special committee on budget and accounts, is known for his close ties to Lee, having served as the DP's floor leader when Lee was the party's leader.
Meanwhile, Hwang's nomination came after former Minister of Oceans Chun Jae-soo resigned late last year amid allegations that he had accepted bribes from the Unification Church.
Lee also named Jung Il-yeon, a former judge, as the chief of the Anti-Corruption & Civil Rights Commission and Song Sang-kyo, a former secretary general of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, to lead the commission.
Meanwhile, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung's approval rating fell slightly from a week earlier last week, marking its first decline in six weeks, a survey showed on Monday.
Lee's approval rating stood at 57.1 per cent, down 1.1 percentage points from the previous week, according to the survey by Realmeter, commissioned by a local business news outlet. Of those surveyed, 38.2 percent said they did not approve of Lee, up 1 percentage point over the cited period.
Realmeter partly attributed the drop in approval rating, which came despite positive financial and economic indicators, to recent social debates over the fairness of the government's push to merge major cities and provinces and lower the age for criminal punishment.
Lee has proposed merging the central city of Daejeon and the surrounding province of South Chungcheong as a way to help balanced regional development beyond the Seoul metropolitan area.
The latest survey was conducted on 2,507 adults from Monday through Friday and had a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points, with a confidence level of 95 per cent.
In a separate survey conducted by the same pollster on 1,002 individuals aged 18 and over on Thursday and Friday, the approval rating for the ruling Democratic Party fell 1.5 percentage points from a week earlier to 47.1 percent.
The approval rating for the main opposition People Power Party rose 1.2 percentage points to 33.8 per cent.
The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points, with a confidence level of 95 per cent.