Lee Hai-chan Approved as Prime Minister

Lee Hai-chan Approved as Prime Minister. June. 29, 2004 22:10. by Yeon-Wook Jung Jung-Hun Kim jyw11@donga.com jnghn@donga.com.

During a plenary session on June 29, the National Assembly approved Lee Hai-chan as prime minister by a vote of 200 to 84, and five invalid votes. A total of 289 lawmakers out of 299 attended the session.

As a motion for approving Lee as Prime Minister was passed, President Roh Moo-hyun will carry out the plan today to partly reshuffle the three ministries of the cabinet, which are the ministry of reunification, ministry of health and welfare and ministry of culture and tourism, by officially accepting the recommendation from new Prime Minister.

It is certain that former Uri Party chairman Chung Dong-young will become a unification minister, former Uri Party floor leader Kim Geun-tae a health and welfare minister, and Rep. Chung Dong-chae of the Uri Party a culture and tourism minister.

Having served imprisonment due to his participation in the students’ movement in 1974 as a sociology student in Seoul National University, and in a conspiracy against Kim Dae-jung in 1980, Lee is recorded as the first activist Prime Minister.

In addition, the 52-year-old Lee is the youngest prime minister since former chairman of United Liberal Democrats Kim Jong-pil took the prime minister’s position at the age of 45 in 1971, and who opened the era of young prime ministers in their early fifties.

The Uri Party, the Millennium Democratic Party and the United Liberal Democrats decided their party’s stance to approve the motion, whereas lawmakers of the Grand National Party cast free votes. The Democratic Labor Party was opposed to the motion to protest the additional troop dispatch to Iraq.

After the approval of prime minister, a spokesman of the Uri Party, Rep. Lim Jong-suk, said, “We are confident that the reform-minded and unity-oriented Lee will successfully lead national needs such as reform, stability, unification, and progress.” A spokesman of the GNP, Han Sun-kyo, also requested that “Prime Minister Lee should be the prime minister of the nation rather than that of President Roh.”