Yoon Approves Nomination Bills for Supreme Court Justices Kwon Young-jun and Seo Kyung-hwan

Passed in the National Assembly Plenary Session the Day Before... Term Begins Immediately

President Yoon Suk-yeol gave final approval on the 19th for the appointment consent bills of Supreme Court Justice nominees Kwon Young-jun and Seo Kyung-hwan.

Lee Do-woon, spokesperson for the Presidential Office, held a briefing at the Yongsan Presidential Office that morning and stated, "President Yoon approved the appointment consent bills, which passed the National Assembly plenary session the previous day, this morning." It has been about 40 days since Chief Justice Kim Myung-soo recommended the two nominees for appointment on the 9th of last month, and the two new Supreme Court Justices will officially begin their duties after the inauguration ceremony that afternoon.

[Image source=Yonhap News]

Justice Kwon is known as an expert in civil law, while Justice Seo is recognized as a specialist in insolvency cases. The legal community generally classifies the two justices as relatively moderate in their orientations. The two new justices were the last appointments recommended by Chief Justice Kim Myung-soo, who will retire in September. Justices Cho Jae-yeon and Park Jung-hwa, who retired, were the first Supreme Court Justices appointed during the Moon Jae-in administration and began their terms in July 2017.

The appointment consent bills for the two new justices passed the National Assembly plenary session the previous day. According to the Constitution, Supreme Court Justices are appointed by the President with the consent of the National Assembly upon the recommendation of the Chief Justice. The appointment consent bill for Justice Kwon was adopted with 215 votes in favor, 35 against, and 15 abstentions out of 265 members present. During his tenure as a professor at Seoul National University School of Law, Justice Kwon wrote legal opinions for a law firm and received 1.8 billion won, which became controversial. As a result, the report adoption was postponed at the full meeting of the National Assembly’s Personnel Hearing Special Committee the previous day but was adopted just before the plenary session on the same day. However, a minority opinion stating that receiving a large sum for writing opinions for the law firm was inappropriate was appended to the report. In response, Justice Kwon issued a statement saying, "For ongoing lawsuits among the cases where legal opinions were submitted to the law firm, I will withdraw the submission of those opinions," and "I intend to return or donate a significant portion of the income to give back to society." The consent bill for Justice Seo was passed with 243 votes in favor, 15 against, and 7 abstentions.

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