On the 24th, the motion to nominate a candidate for Supreme Court justice Oh Seok-joon was approved by the National Assembly. 119 days have passed since the appointment request.
The National Assembly met this afternoon in plenary and approved the motion for the nomination of Candidate Oh with 220 votes in favour, 51 against and 5 abstentions out of 276 present. Approval by a Supreme Court justice requires the presence of a majority of members of the National Assembly and the consent of a majority of members present.
The Democratic Party of Korea did not decide for or against Candidate Oh’s nomination as a party argument, but left it to their own free will.
The motion to nominate candidate Oh took the longest time ever, passing 119 days after Chief Justice Kim Myung-soo proposed the nomination on July 28. Among previous Supreme Court justices, former Supreme Court Justice Park Sang-ok (108 days) took the longest from nomination recommendation to approval.
The power of the people pushed the Democratic Party to accept the nomination of the candidate Oh. Because candidate Oh’s nomination was delayed, no Supreme Court decisions were held for more than two months, in which all 13 Supreme Court justices, including the Chief Justice, had to attend.
The National Assembly held a confirmation hearing on candidate Oh on August 29, but the confirmation hearing report was not adopted as the Democratic Party took an ineligible position. Candidate Oh caused controversy by ruling that the bus company’s action that fired the bus driver who embezzled 800 won was justified and ruled that the prosecutor who was fired after receiving entertainment worth 850,000 won was unfair. The Democratic Party also contested the personal friendship between President Yoon Seok-yeol and candidate Oh. Candidate Oh replied, “I will not have met (with President Yoon) 5 times in the past 10 years” to a question from a Democratic Party lawmaker asking the number of meetings with President Yoon at the staff hearing. Candidate Oh, a year younger than President Yoon’s law school at Seoul National University, is known to be close to President Yoon.
In today’s plenary session, an amendment to the Civil Act was also approved to avoid the problem of ‘debt inheritance’ for minor children. According to the current legislation, minor heirs will pay all parental debts regardless of their will, unless their legal representative gives limited consent (responsibility for repayment of the ancestor’s debts only within the framework of the inherited property) or the renunciation of inheritance (renunciation of both property and debt). The amendment allowed for limited approval within three months of the date minor heirs learned that the inherited debts exceeded the estate after they came of age.
An amendment to the Zoo Aquarium Act was also passed, transforming zoos from a registration system to a licensing system. The amendment includes strengthening institution standards for existing zoos and aquariums and imposing provisions such as closures and fines if animals are not handled properly. Recently, as some small zoos and aquariums neglected animals without feeding them during the closure period due to Corona 19, rumors have emerged that the management of zoos and aquariums should be strengthened. A zoo operator who committed animal abuse, such as letting a diseased camel die at a zoo in Daegu and using the carcass as wild beast food at another zoo he manages, was given a suspended prison sentence by the court of first instance last September There was also work.
A partial amendment to the Private School Law, which provides that professors, associate professors and assistant professors of private universities are sentenced to fines of 3 million won or more for fraudulent offenses related to their duties while in office and resign for reasons of Naturally if the sentence is final; A partial amendment to the law on personnel of military civil servants, which extends the statute of limitations for cases such as sexual harassment from three years to 10 years, was also approved by the plenary session of the National Assembly that day.
