Yoon to Appoint Successor Secretary Next Week... Second Cabinet Reshuffle Possible as Early as Next Month

Dissolution of the Chief Secretary's Office and Appointment of 4 Vice Ministers as Secretaries
Security Office's Unification Secretary Also Expected to Be Replaced
Second Cabinet Reshuffle Including Industry Minister and Broadcasting Commissioner Chairman Likely to Be Delayed

President Yoon Suk-yeol has nominated five presidential secretaries as vice ministers, and plans to dismantle the Management Secretary’s Office, which led the presidential office’s relocation to Yongsan and the creation of Yongsan Children's Park, and appoint successor secretaries soon. The positions of Minister of Trade, Industry and Energy and Chairman of the Korea Communications Commission, which were excluded from this reshuffle, are expected to be appointed next month or around August.

According to the presidential office on the 30th, it will also begin reorganizing the presidential office by appointing successors to the vacant secretary positions starting next week. The presidential secretaries nominated as vice ministers this time are Kim Oh-jin, Management Secretary (1st Vice Minister of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport), Baek Won-guk, Land, Infrastructure and Transport Secretary (2nd Vice Minister of MOLIT), Park Sung-hoon, National Planning Secretary (Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries), Lim Sang-jun, National Task Secretary (Vice Minister of Environment), and Cho Sung-kyung, Science and Technology Secretary (1st Vice Minister of the Ministry of Science and ICT).

The Management Secretary’s Office, which was a temporary organization for the presidential office’s relocation to Yongsan, will be dismantled, and its administrative officers will return to their respective ministries. The other four secretaries are expected to be appointed from within the presidential office or ministries.

The new National Planning Secretary is likely to be Kang Myung-gu, Senior Administrative Officer of the Presidential Secretariat; the National Task Secretary, Kim Jong-moon, Director of the Regulatory Coordination Office at the Office for Government Policy Coordination; the Science and Technology Secretary, Choi Won-ho, Head of the Aerospace Agency Establishment Promotion Team at the Ministry of Science and ICT; and the Land, Infrastructure and Transport Secretary, Gil Byung-woo, Urban Policy Officer at MOLIT. For the National Security Office’s Unification Secretary, Kim Soo-kyung, a North Korean human rights expert and professor at Hanshin University, has been nominated as the successor to Baek Tae-hyun, a secretary from the Ministry of Unification.

Administrative Officer Kang Myung-gu was recruited as the first working-level staff after President Yoon’s political declaration at the end of June 2021 and served as the schedule general manager during the last presidential election. Since the launch of the Yoon Suk-yeol administration, he has coordinated the president’s schedule in the Presidential Secretariat.

Director Kim Jong-moon entered public service through the 37th Administrative Examination and is a contemporary of Secretary Lim Sang-jun. He served as a specialist on the Planning and Coordination Subcommittee of the Transition Committee. Team Leader Choi Won-ho passed the 28th Technical Examination and led the establishment of the Korea Aerospace Agency (KASA). Policy Officer Gil Byung-woo passed the 32nd Technical Examination and has achieved results in urban regeneration and smart city fields.

The appointments for the Minister of Trade, Industry and Energy and Chairman of the Korea Communications Commission are planned to proceed without haste. Since 15 ministers and vice ministers were appointed in the reshuffle the day before, the priority is stabilizing the government organization and accelerating the national agenda drive.

Regarding the Korea Communications Commission, since the term of former Chairman Han Sang-hyuk ends at the end of next month, if a new chairman is appointed this time, they would have to complete the remainder of Han’s term and then be newly appointed, requiring two rounds of confirmation hearings, which is also being taken into consideration.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.