Fact Check: In the End, 'Zero-Witness' Hearings... How They Compare to the Yoon Administration

This week is the so-called "Hearing Super Week," during which confirmation hearings for the second-term cabinet appointments of the Lee Jae-myung administration are being held one after another. Yesterday, a confirmation hearing was held for Justice Minister nominee Kim Seung-won, but there were no witnesses or references. The same was true for hearings of other nominees. Criticisms of "empty hearings" have continued. Following last year, the keyword "zero witnesses" has once again become a key contentious issue in the hearing landscape this year.

Political remarks over this have also been divided. First, Seo Young-kyo, chairperson of the National Assembly's Legislation and Judiciary Committee (from the Democratic Party), defended the nominee during a plenary meeting of the committee on September 9, saying, "Proceeding without witnesses is what usually happens in confirmation hearings."


On the other hand, Representative Joo Jin-woo of the People Power Party stepped up his offensive during the confirmation hearing for Supreme Court Justice nominee Kim Sung-soo on September 14, stating, "The streak of confirmation hearings with zero witnesses and references is continuing, and this is a disgrace to the National Assembly."


To see how things were in the past, we analyzed all confirmation hearings under the Lee Jae-myung administration. Because looking only at cases under the current administration could make generalization difficult, we also investigated the Yoon Suk Yeol administration, when the People Power Party was the ruling party and the Democratic Party was the opposition party. The intention was to compare the situation with the offensive and defensive roles reversed. In both administrations, the Democratic Party held an overwhelming majority of close to 180 seats in the National Assembly, effectively "controlling" that variable, which was judged to enhance the validity of the analysis.

In the National Assembly Minutes System, minutes of confirmation hearings are organized separately, and the names of witnesses and references who officially attended the hearings are recorded in the minutes. We consulted these records.


According to the analysis, a total of 134 confirmation hearings were held: 91 under the Yoon Suk Yeol administration and 43 under the Lee Jae-myung administration prior to the second-term appointments.

The 134 confirmation hearings are as follows:

After excluding confirmation hearings for nominees to the judiciary and the National Election Commission, where political issues are relatively less contentious, we narrowed the scope down to hearings related to government cabinet appointments, totaling 104 sessions. In hearings for nominees to the judiciary and the National Election Commission, there are few instances of witnesses or references attending.

Accordingly, the SBS Fact Check team conducted an analysis based on the 104 hearings focused on the executive cabinet. First, we examined how many hearings had at least one witness or reference in attendance.


Under the Yoon Suk Yeol administration, a total of 66 confirmation hearings related to cabinet appointments were held, and among them, hearings attended by at least one witness or reference numbered 24. This accounts for 36.4% of the total.

Under the Lee Jae-myung administration, witnesses or references attended in 10 out of 38 hearings, or 26.3%.

Although the proportion has decreased somewhat under the current administration, hearings attended by witnesses or references were at the 20 to 30 percent level under both administrations.

Unlike parliamentary investigation hearings that center on witnesses and references, confirmation hearings more often proceeded centering on the nominees themselves without witnesses or references.

However, looking at the "scale" of witnesses and references who attended the hearings, the difference was quite substantial.


In confirmation hearings related to cabinet appointments under the Yoon Suk Yeol administration, a total of 130 witnesses and references attended: 55 witnesses and 75 references. This was an average of 2.0 people per hearing.

In contrast, under the Lee Jae-myung administration, a total of 19 people attended: 11 witnesses and 8 references, representing an average of 0.5 people per hearing. Simply put, the scale of witness and reference attendance under the current administration has dropped to about one-fourth the level of the previous administration.

While a simple numerical comparison is difficult because the political weight and gravity of allegations differ for each nominee, it is a fact that the scale has decreased considerably under the Lee Jae-myung administration. Under the Yoon Suk Yeol administration, the Democratic Party, as the majority party, frequently pushed actively for the attendance of witnesses and references.


While it is true that 70 to 80 percent of cabinet nominee confirmation hearings have no witnesses or references, the scale of witnesses and references changed dramatically as the administration changed. This appears to indicate that political considerations took precedence over principles. In particular, given that the Democratic Party actively pushed for adopting witnesses and references for contentious nominees when it was in opposition, it is difficult to explain this under a universal framing of "what usually happens in confirmation hearings."

Accordingly, the SBS Fact Check team rates the claim that "proceeding without witnesses is what usually happens in confirmation hearings" as "Mostly False."


Now to another issue. In the opposition camp, the issue of independent lawmaker Han Dong-hoon attending the hearing has also come under scrutiny.


Lawmaker Han Dong-hoon has actively raised nominee Kim Seung-won's alleged lobbying of the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety regarding a COVID-19 treatment. Within the People Power Party, arguments emerged that Han should directly scrutinize this issue. Pro-Han lawmaker Woo Jae-joon went so far as to demand that the disciplinary action against independent lawmaker Han Dong-hoon be cancelled or suspended so he could be deployed to nominee Kim Seung-won's confirmation hearing. After being expelled from the People Power Party in January over the party members' bulletin board incident, Han had been clashing with the party leadership faction, and was later elected to the National Assembly as an independent candidate in the June by-election for the Buk-gu Gap constituency in Busan.


Representative Yoon Sang-hyun of the People Power Party argued during the plenary meeting of the National Assembly's Legislation and Judiciary Committee on September 9, "Let us adopt lawmaker Han Dong-hoon, who was Justice Minister at the time, as a witness for the hearing." He continued to make similar assertions afterward. However, a counterargument was raised that "there is no precedent for having an incumbent National Assembly member appear as a witness in a confirmation hearing."

To verify this, we checked the Compendium of National Assembly Precedents.


To start with the conclusion, no precedent of an incumbent National Assembly member attending a confirmation hearing as a witness was confirmed. However, there has been a case of an incumbent lawmaker attending as a reference.

During the confirmation hearing for Prime Minister nominee Lee Wan-koo held on February 11, 2015, in the 19th National Assembly, then-Saenuri Party lawmaker Kim Dong-wan attended as a reference. Former lawmaker Kim Dong-wan had served as vice governor when former Prime Minister Lee was governor of South Chungcheong Province. The context was somewhat different in that his appearance was practically to support the nominee rather than verify allegations against him.


Witnesses and references undergo virtually the same procedure in the adoption process. The Compendium of National Assembly Precedents also addresses the reference attendance case under the entry regarding "attendance of incumbent lawmakers as witnesses in confirmation hearings."

If the intent is to ask whether it is possible for an incumbent lawmaker to appear at a confirmation hearing, or whether there is a precedent, it is necessary to consider the precedent of appearing as a reference as well.


In the end, regarding lawmaker Han Dong-hoon's appearance at the confirmation hearing, the claim that "no incumbent lawmaker has ever appeared as a witness" is true, but if the remark meant that "there is no precedent for an incumbent lawmaker attending a confirmation hearing," it can be seen as untrue.

Accordingly, the SBS Fact Check team rates the claim that "no incumbent lawmaker has ever attended a confirmation hearing as a witness" as "Half True."


The debate surrounding "zero-witness hearings" is unlikely to end with this round of second-term appointments. Similar arguments and rebuttals are likely to repeat like a treadmill. We hope today's fact check serves as reference material to examine precedents ahead of political sparring.
 
(Writer: Kim Hyo-jin, Intern: Kim Jung-won)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.