TK-oriented personnel appointment at prosecution and presidential office

TK-oriented personnel appointment at prosecution and presidential office. February. 09, 2015 08:50. .

Key investigative positions in the prosecution are filled with people from TK, abbreviation for Daegu city and North Gyeongsang province. The Ministry of Justice has appointed Kim Soo-nam from Taegu, former chief of the Seoul Central District Prosecutors` Office, as Assistant Director of Supreme Prosecutors` Office and named Park Seong-jae from the North Gyeongsang, former chief of Seoul High Prosecutor`s Office, as the chief of Seoul Central District Prosecutor`s Office. Last month, the presidential office Cheong Wa Dae also filled key positions for civil affairs with personnel from TK regions, by naming Lee Myeong-jae as Special Presidential Assistant for Civil Affairs and Woo Byeong-woo as Senior Presidential Secretary for Civil Affairs. As personnel with TK background has taken up such core positions in the civil affairs of the presidential office Cheong Wa Dae and investigation of the prosecutors’ office, it is highly likely that Cheong Wa Dae’s influence gets stronger over major investigation by the prosecution.

Chief of the Seoul Central District Prosecutors` Office is the crème-de-la-crème among key positions in the prosecutors’ office which carries out investigation on politically sensitive special cases and public security issues. Ever since the Central Investigation Department at Supreme Prosecutors` Office has been closed, the Seoul Central District Prosecutors Office’s special investigation team has been conducting investigation on cases that would have been probed by the Central Investigation Department in the past. In the Park Geun-hye administration, the TK-originated officials have been appointed as the chief of Seoul Central District Prosecutors Office for three consecutive times. There have been similar occasions in the past administrations, but the current government seems to have strong obsession to name people from a reliable region as the chief of the Central District Prosecutors’ Office in Seoul.

Assistant Director of Supreme Prosecutors` Office is the "second-in-command" who assists Prosecutor General, and one of the candidates for future Prosecutor General. As newly appointed Assistant Director Kim has served as chief of Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office, Kim is mentioned as a strong candidate for the next prosecutor general. While serving as the chief of Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office, Kim is evaluated to have led investigation on politically sensitive cases, such as "memogate scandal" that involved leakage of presidential documents or defamation charges against the head of Sankei Newspaper Seoul Bureau, to suit the taste of the presidential office. Some attribute the current administration’s ever-increasing TK-oriented personnel appointment to the trauma that it suffered from former Prosecutor General Chae Dong-wook. According to their view, the prosecution had a conflict with the justice ministry and shook the administration during the prosecution’s investigation on National Intelligence Service for alleged manipulation of public opinions on the internet in support of then-presidential candidate Park during 2012 presidential election. As a reaction from that occasion, the Park administration now only appoints those with unquestionably strong loyalty to the core positions in the prosecution.

In addition to the prosecutors’ office, other core positions in charge of corrective inspection in the government, such as chairman of the Board of Audit and Inspection, prosecutor general, director of the National Tax Service, and Chief of National Police Agency, are all filled with people from Yeongnam region, which is well known for the strong loyalty to the current administration. If the supreme leadership of corrective inspection agencies is held by those from the same region, the organizations designed for corrective actions may fall into a trap of "group think," where they may tend to cover up irregularities, rather than eradicate. In the past, there were many cases where politically sensitive information such as corruption of then-president’s relatives was ignored by a leader of an inspection organization, who was from the same hometown as the president’s relatives, and the issue was unchecked and left to fester. Officials from other regions who are neglected in the personnel affairs will have a sense of loss and growing antipathy against the government. The administration must get out of the outdated practice in personnel affairs, which utilize the major inspection agencies as a shield of the government or take them as a target of “strict discipline and control.”