[Anchor]

Democratic Party Representative Kim Seung-won, nominated as the Minister of Justice, stated that his urgent calling is to help settle the new criminal justice system. Meanwhile, the People Power Party criticized the nominee over his background, calling him a spearhead for dropping the indictment of President Lee Jae-myung.

Reporter Son Hyeong-an has the details.

[Reporter]

Yesterday morning at the National Assembly's Legislation and Judiciary Committee subcommittee.

Attending as a Democratic Party member of the Judiciary Committee, Justice Minister Nominee Kim Seung-won said he feels a "heavy sense of responsibility" and cited the stabilization of the revised Criminal Procedure Act and other measures he actively pursued as his "calling."

[Kim Seung-won / Justice Minister Nominee: I think the most urgent calling is to ensure that the new criminal justice system, the first in 70 years, successfully takes root in South Korea.]

However, the People Power Party launched a fierce offensive, highlighting the fact that Nominee Kim served as co-representative of the "Association for Dropping the Indictment of President Lee Jae-myung," which was launched last February, calling the appointment a move to push through the cancellation of the president's trial.

[Chung Jeom-sik / People Power Party Floor Leader: They have decided to assign the ministerial post of the primary department for trial cancellation to the spearhead of dropping the indictment. This is a total rejection of the demand for state affairs reform.]

Claims also followed from the People Power Party that Nominee Kim had been a "defense attorney for the Daejang-dong case."

The Democratic Party defended Kim, arguing that he is the right person to lead the transition of the criminal justice system.

They hit back at the claim that he was a "former Daejang-dong defense attorney," calling it a "malicious political maneuver."

[Hahn Byung-doo / Democratic Party Floor Leader: Representative Jang Dong-hyeok has started spreading false information that he was a Daejang-dong defense attorney. This is fiction of the highest order.]

Nominee Kim's side released a statement acknowledging that his name was included in the defense team for Nam Wook's Attorney-at-Law Act violation case in May 2015, but stated that after meeting him once, he resigned in July of that same year, and clarified that he never acted as defense counsel for the main Daejang-dong development corruption case, which has been under investigation and trial since 2021.

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Nam was indicted in 2015 on charges of receiving 830 million won from initial Daejang-dong developers under the guise of political lobbying and was acquitted the following year. However, regarding charges of conspiring with private developers including Kim Man-bae to rake in a total of 780 billion won in illicit profits through the Daejang-dong development project, he was sentenced to four years in prison in the first trial last year, and his appeal is currently underway.

(Photo: Yonhap News / Video reporting: Lee Seung-hwan, Shin Dong-hwan | Video editing: Yu Mi-ra, Design: Lee Jong-jung)