People Power Party floor leader says forcing agency heads into cabinet is impeachable

People Power Party floor leader Jeong Jeom-sik (정점식) said on 23 October that making the head of the Serious Crimes Investigation Agency attend cabinet meetings would itself be grounds for impeaching the president. He spoke at the party's meeting on the parliamentary audit at the National Assembly. "This kind of conduct would be grounds for impeachment," he said. [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 ]

He was answering President Lee Jae-myung. According to Asia Economy and Maeil Business, Lee said on social media the previous day that barring the agency head from cabinet meetings violates the Constitution and the law, and that giving up command and supervision of the agency is grounds for impeachment. Jeong asked whether every past president who did not seat an investigative agency head at cabinet meetings should have been impeached if that were so. He said past presidents did not seat the prosecutor general because of the independence and neutrality of investigations. He said the president can pass state matters to the responsible minister, and that under the agency's law a minister can direct specific cases through the agency head. [ 2 , 4 , 5 , 6 ]

Jeong said the real purpose of seating the heads of the investigation and prosecution agencies was to influence Lee's own trials, directly or indirectly. He pointed to Lee's remark at a cabinet meeting in June to Koo Ja-hyun (구자현), then acting prosecutor general, that 'when you do wrong, you apologise and cancel'. Jeong said this pressed prosecutors to apologise and drop the charges against Lee. According to Newsis, he also said Lee asked parliament in September for a special counsel and tried to neutralise the Chief Justice's power to nominate justices. Jeong said Lee had spent more than 500 days since taking office on a 'political jailbreak' to remove his five trials, and that the 'tower of sins' would collapse on Lee himself. [ 1 , 2 , 4 , 5 , 6 ]

Jeong also criticised the Democratic Party for refusing to adopt four presidential aides as witnesses at the audit of the presidential office, Cheong Wa Dae. They are Kim Hyun-ji, head of the first secretary's office, Jeong Jin-sang, a former political coordination chief of the Democratic Party, Kang Hoon-sik, former chief of staff, and Kim Yong-beom, former policy chief. He called them the president's 'four chiefs'. He said that if China's Mao Zedong had the Gang of Four of the Cultural Revolution beside him, Lee had four powerful aides who led personnel and policy failures. He said the refusal amounted to an admission of the allegations around the presidential office, including personnel decisions by the 'Seongnam-Gyeonggi line' and the hasty introduction of single-stock leveraged ETFs. [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 5 , 6 ]

According to Chosun Ilbo, the presidential office audit is on 29 October, and Maeil Business quoted Jeong saying six days remained. He urged the Democratic Party to reconsider and, if it would not, asked the presidential office to send the four aides itself. He also called last year's move of Kim Hyun-ji to the first secretary's office and the resignations this year of Kim Yong-beom and Kang Hoon-sik 'habitual audit-evasion appointments'. [ 1 , 3 , 5 ]