A nominee for gender equality and family minister has fallen through again under the Lee Jae-myung administration. In July last year, Kang Sun-woo, then nominee for gender equality and family minister, withdrew over allegations of abusive treatment of aides. Little more than a year later, nominee Yong Hye-in also stepped aside after a string of controversies. With two nominees for the same ministry falling in succession under a single administration — an unusual sequence — structural problems surrounding the ministry's appointments have come under scrutiny.
A Seoul Economic Daily review of past ministerial appointments at the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family and its predecessor found that all 11 ministers since the ministry's launch were brought in from outside. More than half of them, six, came from politics, part of a pattern of relying on outside recruitment.
The pattern reflects the ministry's relatively short history and the fact that its very existence has wavered from one administration to the next. Unlike other ministries, where internal promotion to the top post is not uncommon, appointments here have emphasized the ministry's symbolic value and political calculation over policy expertise, critics say.
With gender, family and youth issues now firmly established as major items on the national agenda, repeated confusion over appointments — driven by nominees' personal ethical lapses or by political interests — has prompted calls to build expertise inside the ministry and to fix the structure that leaves it dependent on outsiders.
Ministry Leans on Political Appointees as Lawmakers' Winning Streak Halts
Expanded and reorganized under the Roh Moo-hyun administration, the ministry was scaled back to a women's ministry under the Lee Myung-bak administration before regaining its broader mandate in 2010. Eleven people have held the post since then, up to the ministry's reorganization into the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family in its current form. Among them, former ministers Kim Kum-lae, Kim Hee-jung, Kang Eun-hee and Jin Sun-mee were nominated while serving as sitting members of the National Assembly. Former minister Cho Yoon-sun was tapped after serving as a proportional-representation lawmaker in the 18th Assembly and then as spokesperson for president-elect Park Geun-hye, while former minister Kim Hyun-sook was nominated after a proportional-representation term in the 19th Assembly and a stint as policy adviser to president-elect Yoon Suk-yeol. In all, six of the 11, or 54.5%, had served in the National Assembly.
No career bureaucrat who rose through the ministry has ever been promoted to minister. Former ministers Baek Hee-young, Chung Hyun-back and Lee Jung-ok came from academia, and former minister Chung Young-ai came from the women's policy field, but the ministry repeatedly drew on outsiders from politics, academia and women's groups rather than its own officials.
Kang was the first to break the streak of sitting lawmakers winning confirmation. Her withdrawal last year over the alleged mistreatment of aides marked the first time a nominee who was a sitting lawmaker had failed to be appointed, and Yong's exit little more than a year later became the second. A record that had held for more than two decades was broken twice in barely a year, and both cases came at this ministry.
Since confirmation hearings for ministerial nominees were introduced in 2005, no nominee for the post had failed to win appointment. With two falling in succession under the Lee administration, critics say the established approach to filling the job needs to be reconsidered.
They argue in particular that appointments should rest on expertise in the ministry's work rather than on a nominee's political résumé or symbolic value. Reflexively naming outsiders from politics, they say, no longer matches the expectations of a public that pays close attention to gender and family issues.
Vetting Risks Run High as Nominee Fails to Win Over Women
The ministry's heightened sensitivity to nominees' past conduct and questions of personal integrity, compared with other ministries, is also cited as making appointments harder. Because the ministry handles women's, family and youth policy as well as efforts to reduce gender discrimination and protect victims of violence against women, whether a nominee's personal record and political leanings fit the ministry's character becomes a key test.
That dynamic was on full display as Kang's nomination collapsed. Allegations that she had assigned personal errands to her aides — described as abuse of authority — grew into criticism over whether she was suited to lead the ministry. One poll at the time found more than 60% of respondents considered her unfit.
The same held for Yong. Questions over her spouse's party post and pay, controversy surrounding the management of the Basic Income Party, and her stated plan to keep her Assembly seat while serving as minister all fed doubts about her suitability. Negative assessments were widespread even among women, the central constituency for gender equality policy. In a Gallup Korea survey, only 16% of women said Yong was suited to the post, little different from the 10% of men who said the same.
Women's organizations also objected to the nomination. The Korean Women's Political Network said in a commentary on the 31st of last month, the day the government announced the cabinet reshuffle, that it questioned how someone who had led the push to fully abolish supplementary investigative authority — a change that victims of sexual violence and people vulnerable under the law had tearfully opposed — could guarantee the safety of the vulnerable. "Political collusion and maneuvering alone cannot achieve the shared goal of gender equality," it said.
The Gallup Korea survey cited in this analysis polled 1,000 people aged 18 and older nationwide from the 8th to the 10th of this month. It was conducted through telephone interviews using randomly generated mobile virtual numbers, with a margin of error of ±3.1 percentage points at a 95% confidence level and a response rate of 9.4%.
