SEOUL, September 13 (AJP) - South Korea's nominee for gender equality minister withdrew on Sunday after the governing party asked her to step aside, ending a nomination that had lasted 14 days and, with it, President Lee Jae Myung's first attempt to bring a smaller progressive party into his cabinet.
Yong Hye-in announced the decision at a hastily called news conference at the National Assembly, two weeks after Lee named her on Aug. 30 to lead the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family. She never reached a confirmation hearing.
What ended the nomination was not opposition resistance. Yong said the Democratic Party of Korea (DP), which governs with the support of her own party, had told her to resolve the matter herself.
The message, as she described it, was that the party respected the position she and the Basic Income Party were in, but that public sentiment had not come around to one person holding a proportional seat and a ministry at the same time, and that she should make a decision.
"A cabinet member has to connect the National Assembly and the government and draw cooperation out of both," Yong said. "With the governing party also expressing concern, I judged that carrying out the job was realistically difficult."
The dual role had been the trouble from the start. South Korean law allows sitting lawmakers to serve as ministers, and district representatives have done so routinely. Proportional representatives, who hold their seats through party lists rather than constituencies, have by custom given the seats up on entering the cabinet.
Yong refused, and her reason was arithmetic rather than preference. She is the Basic Income Party's only lawmaker, and she entered parliament in 2020 and again in 2024 through proportional lists run by Democratic Party satellite parties. Had she resigned, the seat would have passed to the next name on the list rather than to her own party, leaving the Basic Income Party with no presence in parliament at all.
She tried to defuse the criticism on Aug. 31, writing on Facebook that she had already told her party she would not run as a proportional candidate in the next general election. It changed little, and the complaints kept coming from within the governing camp as well as from the opposition.
Allegations about the party itself compounded the problem. Critics pointed to her appointment of her husband to a senior Basic Income Party post and accused her of running the party as a private operation.
As recently as Sept. 10, Yong had shown no intention of stepping back. She held a news conference at the National Assembly that day, argued that a lawmaker serving in the cabinet is a principle the law permits, and rebutted the accusations against her one by one.
Three days later she explained why that approach had run out of road.
"There was nothing I could not stand behind, so I wanted to account for each point before the public and I waited for the confirmation hearing," she said Sunday. "But with false information and speculation pouring in from one side, I had no choice but to convey the truth and my own sincerity to the public directly."
The Basic Income Party said the decision was taken over the weekend. Shin Ji-hye, a supreme council member of the party, told reporters after the news conference that the message from the Democratic Party leadership arrived on Saturday and that the final decision followed consultations within the party leadership. Asked whether Cheong Wa Dae had been involved, Shin said that as far as she knew, there had been no contact with the presidential office.
Yong also framed the withdrawal as a way of protecting the alliance that had produced the nomination in the first place, saying stopping there was necessary to carry on the spirit of cooperation within the democratic and progressive camp.
The ministry now waits again. Won Min-kyong, who took office in September last year and ended a leadership vacancy of one year and seven months, remains in the post until a successor is named. She became the ministry's first head after its Korean name was changed on Oct. 1 to drop the word for women in favor of gender equality. Kang Sun-woo, then a Democratic Party lawmaker, withdrew from the same nomination in July last year over allegations that she mistreated her staff.
Yong keeps her National Assembly seat. "I will return to where I started, take a look at myself, and devote myself to my work in parliament with a humble and mature attitude," she said.
AJP Takeaways
- Yong Hye-in withdrew as South Korea's nominee for gender equality minister on Sunday, 14 days after President Lee Jae Myung named her and before any confirmation hearing was held, ending his first attempt to place a smaller progressive party inside the cabinet.
- The Democratic Party of Korea, not the opposition, forced the decision by telling Yong that public sentiment had not come around to one person holding a proportional seat and a ministry at once and that she should decide for herself, three days after she had publicly vowed to fight the accusations point by point.
- The Basic Income Party would have lost its only seat in parliament had Yong resigned it, because she entered the National Assembly in 2020 and 2024 through Democratic Party satellite lists and the seat would have passed to the next name on those lists rather than to her own party. AJP established the succession mechanics beyond the original source copy.
- Shin Ji-hye said the message from the Democratic Party leadership reached the Basic Income Party on Saturday and that, as far as she knew, Cheong Wa Dae had no contact with the party over Yong's position.
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