Yoon calls for bold personnel measures

May 11, 2023, 09:30 am

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President Yoon Suk-yeol greets at a luncheon with the ruling People Power Party (PPP) leadership at the presidential office in Yongsan, Seoul, on May 10, 2023./ Courtesy of presidential office

AsiaToday reporter Park Ji-eun

President Yoon Suk-yeol is known to have called for bold personnel measures against bureaucrats that do not fit the new state policies. The presidential office explained that it was to lighten up the mood in the second year, however political observers say it is aimed at full-fledged drive to achieve national tasks.

According to the presidential office on Wednesday, Yoon said at a private Cabinet meeting the previous day, “Take bold personnel measures if one is obsessed with nuclear phase-out and ideological environmental policies and taking an ambiguous stance without conforming to the new principles of state affairs.” Yoon’s remarks were reportedly not in the prepared manuscript.

Some claim that the bold personnel measures are applicable to ministers. Political circles believe that Yoon will carry out some vice minister-level personnel reshuffle after attending the G7 summit in Hiroshima, Japan, next week.

Some point out that Yoon’s remarks are aimed at the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy and the Ministry of Environment related to nuclear phase-out and ideological environmental policies. However, one of the attendees said, “I understood it as an encouragement to speed up the national task.”

“It means to work speedily in the second year of the administration,” a key official of the presidential office said in a briefing. “He did not give any special directional guidelines regarding personnel.”

Some said that Yoon recently sent a warning message after confirming that a bureaucrat who led that Moon Jae-in government’s denuclearization policy was on the list of key staff candidates.

Meanwhile, more than 80 percent of executives from public institutions that are evaluated by the government were appointed under the Moon Jae-in administration, although it marks the first year of the Yoon administration.

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