Kim Seung-won, candidate for Minister of Justice, explains suspicions ahead of confirmation hearing

Regarding the various suspicions surrounding him, Kim Seung-won, candidate for Minister of Justice, said on the 11th, "As a politician, I am truly sorry for causing concern to the people."

Candidate Kim went to work at the personnel hearing preparation office in Jongno-gu, Seoul on this day and said, "I will definitely tell you the details at the personnel hearing and explain them well."

When asked how he hired the son of Chief Judge Jeong In-jae, who appears in suspicion of requesting approval for a clinical trial for COVID-19 treatment, as a legislative assistant in the office of the National Assembly member, Candidate Kim replied, "Because I was proud, I gave him the job of legislative assistant through a public interview."

He explained, "I understand that legislative assistants are not formal employees but assist with the work of the National Assembly. From what I remember, they worked hard and worked hard for only about 1 million won a month."

He added, "If he is not honest, this is all public information," and added, "I understand that he went to the military after finishing (his work)."

Regarding the suspicion of solicitation from the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety regarding clinical trial approval, the company maintained its previous position that it was a public interest complaint.

Candidate Kim claimed, "It was a message to the effect that a small company is not proceeding with the procedure due to some pressure from a multinational company, so please find out why and resolve this unfairness."

He explained that, according to the data he confirmed at the time, clinical trials were also underway overseas, and that he decided it would be okay to forward the complaint as both the ruling and opposition parties and the government were making efforts to develop treatments during the COVID-19 period.

He said, "I only delivered it to the Minister of Food and Drug Safety once and exchanged related text messages once or twice. I decided that this was enough content to convey as a way to handle grievances."

Candidate Kim went into the office without answering questions about whether an official announcement was made when recruiting legislative assistants and how he viewed additional recordings containing suspicions that he connected Broker Yang with Chief Judge Jeong.

Candidate Kim also expressed his intention to focus on reform tasks once he takes office as minister.

He said, "So far, I have worked on a variety of things, including media reform, prosecution reform, and commercial law revision to normalize the capital market. If I become Minister of Justice with that mindset, I want to focus on reformative work for the people."

He then emphasized, “We will do our best to ensure that the new criminal justice system is well established and that there is no inconvenience to the public.”

Candidate Kim's National Assembly confirmation hearing is scheduled for the 15th.