Cho Seung-rae: "The ruling party never intended to adopt Lee Dong-gwan as a witness in the hearing"

Regarding the failure to adopt witnesses for the confirmation hearing of nominee Lee Dong-gwan, Chairman of the Korea Communications Commission, due to a lack of agreement between the ruling and opposition parties, Cho Seung-rae, a member of the Democratic Party of Korea, pointed out that the ruling party never had the intention to adopt witnesses from the start.

Cho, the opposition party's secretary of the Science, ICT, Broadcasting and Communications Committee, said on YTN's "News King Park Ji-hoon" on the 18th, "(The ruling party) is saying they will summon people like former MBC President Kim Jang-gyeom, KBS's Ko Dae-young, and Kang Kyu-hyung as witnesses, but these people have nothing to do with the nominee's hearing," adding, "Claiming that the agreement broke down because we rejected those witness requests means there was no intention to adopt witnesses at all."

On the 22nd, at the full meeting of the Science, Technology, Information and Broadcasting Committee held at the National Assembly, Cho Seung-rae, a member of the Democratic Party of Korea, is speaking. Photo by Kim Hyun-min kimhyun81@

The Democratic Party requested witnesses such as former MBC President Park Seong-je and former Hana Financial Group Chairman Kim Seung-yu regarding allegations of media control and school violence involving the nominee, while the People Power Party requested former MBC President Kim Jang-gyeom and former KBS President Ko Dae-young as witnesses, but ultimately no witnesses were adopted.

The ruling party claims, "We had reached an agreement, but the Democratic Party added witnesses, causing the adoption to fail." In response, Cho said, "The claim that there was an agreement is a false statement by the ruling party," adding, "In reality, the ruling party requested witnesses who have nothing to do with this nominee's hearing."

He stated, "Gathering those people (Kim Jang-gyeom, Ko Dae-young) and MBC's Park Seong-je, who claim to have suffered damages related to broadcasting under previous governments, and discussing how to prevent such issues in the future is a matter for the National Assembly inspection or other forums," adding, "They have nothing to do with this nominee's hearing."

He also criticized the nominee's side for not submitting sufficient materials. Cho said, "Except for the basic materials that should be provided when requesting a confirmation hearing, we have practically received no materials," adding, "In fact, the materials we received from various institutions were all printed notices stating, 'This cannot be submitted due to concerns about personal information and privacy exposure.' If this is considered a response, how can it be called material submission?"

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