South Korean President Moon Jae-in speaks during a meeting of his senior secretaries at the presidential Blue House in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, April 12, 2021. (PHOTO / AP)
SEOUL – South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Friday nominated former four-term lawmaker and interior minister Kim Boo-kyum as the new prime minister in his cabinet reshuffle, the presidential Blue House said.
Kim will become the third prime minister of the Moon government, which was inaugurated in May 2017, if the nomination is approved in the parliamentary confirmation hearings.
The president replaced five ministers of land, labor, industry, science and ocean.
Kim Boo-kyum will become the third prime minister of the Moon government, which was inaugurated in May 2017, if the nomination is approved in the parliamentary confirmation hearings
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Lim Hye-sook was named as the minister of science and ICT, and Moon Sung-wook was picked as the minister of trade, industry and energy.
An Kyung-duk was nominated as the minister of employment and labor, and Noh Hyeong-ouk was selected as the minister of land, infrastructure and transport. Park Jun-young was named as the minister of oceans and fisheries.
Moon also named new senior secretaries, including Lee Cheol-hee as senior presidential secretary for political affairs and Lee Tae-han as senior presidential secretary for social affairs.
Park Kyung-mee was named as the new Blue House spokesperson.
The cabinet reshuffle came after Moon's ruling Democratic Party was routed in the April 7 mayoral by-elections for the capital Seoul and the second-biggest city of Busan.
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It also came as Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun, who has served in the post under President Moon Jae-in since January 2020, said Friday he was stepping down. The move puts him on a track to be a candidate in Moon’s party to replace the president when his single, five-year term ends in about a year.
“As the prime minister of the Moon Jae-in administration, I tried my best to realize the spirit of inclusiveness and fairness,” Chung said. “But we still have long way to go.”
Chung has a challenging task of embracing progressive policies that appeal to the base and attract voters disenchanted with Moon, whose support rate hit a record low 30 percent in a weekly tracking poll released Friday by Gallup Korea. There are two other likely contenders for the party race – Lee Nak-yon, another former prime minister, and Lee Jae-myung, the governor of the country’s most populous province – and none has emerged as a clear front-runner.
With Bloomberg inputs