Jeong H. Kim, the Ko-Am whom Park Geun-hye named to head her bigger and better science ministry called a surprise press conference this morning to announce he was resigning as minister-nominate out of frustration with the political process.
If you want to hear Kim make the announcement—or at least hear how well he speaks Korean—here’s the video.
Kim’s resignation comes as the ruling and opposition parties enter last-minute negotiations to pass President Park’s government reformation bill, the major sticking point of which is the transfer of some broadcasting responsibilities from the Korea Communications Commission to the science ministry:
President Park and the ruling Saenuri Party insist this ministry needs the broadcasting policy oversight function to enable it to fuse the broadcasting and communications sectors and strengthen content creation for the ICT industry.
However, the main opposition Democratic United Party argues the transfer of broadcasting oversight would endanger media impartiality as it would place broadcasting policies directly under the government’s control.
“The Korea Communications Commission currently governs all policies concerning system operators and program providers. But the Park Geun-hye government says it will transfer all of this to the new science ministry.”
In a meeting of lawmakers that followed Kim’s announcement, Saenuri Party head Hwang Woo-yea called on Kim to reconsider his resignation. More to the point, he told Kim to stop being such a wuss—sure, Korea’s got a ton of problems, but we man the fuck up and overcome those problems.
Yes, I paraphrased there.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Disappointed Jeong bowed out so early. However, Korean politics are particularly dirty and tough so maybe at the end of the day he wasn’t cut out for it.
At the same time, this is a big missed opportunity for Korea.
His speech was very well versed and no foreign accent. It was hard to tell if he was a gyopo who grew up in the US.
Anyhow, it is a big loss for SK.
Mr. Kim, save the $100M expatriation tax for other good causes.
what a cop out and a weakling. i had so much respect for him and what he’s’ overcome in life to achieve what he has achieved its truly an inspirational story, but now this new chapter is not so inspirational, it just shows me that if you’re already comfortable in life what’s the point of getting into a small mudfight, why fight on?!?!. Just come back home to your comfy-zone and job and live a cozy life. this is not the same man i respected just two weeks ago. i guess its true, it only happens in the movies.
I have no doubt that he is a man who is willing to sacrifice “himself” for his motherland. I do not think it is a matter of money or maintaining comfortable life. Based on news reports, it seems he could not let his family and wife, who are not related with his prospective position, be accused of owning a building unknowingly rented to a room salon business (it seems that a property management agent took care of the renting business). It is said that his daughters shed tears reading the accusations against his family, which made him decide to leave:
http://news.nate.com/view/20130306n01987?mid=n0200
This said it best: [기자수첩] 김종훈의 ‘조국 헌신’… 이렇게 가벼운 것이었나 http://news.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2013/03/06/2013030600292.html?news_Head1
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