[Editorial] Lee Jong Seok's Nat'l Assembly Hearing

The National Assembly has gotten to work on its series of hearings on the appointment of Lee Jong Seok as unification minister and Lee Taek Soon as head of the National Police Agency. Confirmation and other appointment hearings, it should go without saying, are about determining whether an appointee has the ability, moral standing, and sense of changing social phenomena required of a high-ranking public servant. On the first day of Lee Jong Seok's hearing, however, committee members never got to examining his qualifications because they focused on his politics.

This is someone who has long been involved in the formation and implementation of the Korean government's diplomacy and security policies in his capacity as deputy chief of the National Security Council (NSC). If his hearing is to be more effective, he needs to be judged based on his performance in that position. Important issues would be the diplomatic memorandum about strategic flexibility for United States Forces Korea and other questions about the soundness of policy, and whether Lee has any responsibility to bear.

When members of the ruling and main opposition parties asked questions about those issues on Monday, however, they were too soft on him. His answers, in turn, were nothing more than repetitions of things he has said before. Members of the main opposition party tried to make him look like someone with pro-North sympathies, and the method they chose was to take a tiny portion of what he has said while working real hard to ignore the overall tone of his books and articles.

Lee is even labeled by some as someone who engages in "secret-room diplomacy subservient to the U.S." Regardless of whether that is accurate or not, it has already been made clear that he is at the very least not pro-North Korea. It is nothing but one of those old red-baiting offensives when the opposition continues to question his politics. One would like to see members of both parties take a different approach to Lee's hearing.

The Hankyoreh, 7 February 2006.

[Translations by Seoul Selection]