On the 24th, the motion to appoint a candidate for Supreme Court Justice Oh Seok-joon passed the National Assembly. It has been 119 days since the appointment was requested.
The National Assembly held a plenary session this afternoon and passed the motion for appointment of Candidate Oh with 220 in favor, 51 against, and 5 abstentions out of 276 present. Approval of a Supreme Court justice requires the presence of a majority of the members of the National Assembly and the consent of a majority of the members present.
The Democratic Party of Korea did not decide for or against the appointment of Candidate Oh as a party argument, but left it to their free will.
The motion for the appointment of Candidate Oh took the longest time ever, passing 119 days after Supreme Court Chief Kim Myung-soo proposed the appointment on July 28. Among past Supreme Court Justices, former Supreme Court Justice Park Sang-ok (108 days) took the longest time from appointment recommendation to approval.
The power of the people has urged the Democratic Party to agree to the appointment of Candidate Oh. As the appointment of Candidate Oh was delayed, no Supreme Court decision was held for more than two months, in which all 13 Supreme Court justices, including the Chief Justice, had to participate.
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 made an ineligible position. Candidate Oh caused controversy by ruling that the action of the bus company that fired the bus driver who embezzled 800 won was justified, and ruled that the prosecutor who was dismissed after receiving entertainment worth 850,000 won was unfair. The Democratic Party also took issue with the personal friendship between President Yoon Seok-yeol and Candidate Oh. Candidate Oh answered, “I will not have met (with President Yoon) 5 times in the last 10 years” to a question from a Democratic Party lawmaker asking about the number of meetings with President Yoon at the personnel hearing. Candidate Oh, a one-year junior of President Yoon’s law school at Seoul National University, is known to be close with President Yoon.
At the plenary session on this day, an amendment to the Civil Act was also passed to prevent the problem of ‘debt inheritance’ of minor children. According to the current law, minor heirs will pay all their parents’ debts regardless of their will, unless their legal representative gives limited approval (responsibility for repayment of the ancestor’s debts only within the scope of the inherited property) or renunciation of inheritance (renunciation of both property and debt). It is supposed to float. The amendment made it possible for limited approval within three months from the date on which minor heirs became aware of the fact that the inherited debts were greater than the property after they came of age.
An amendment to the ‘Act on the Management of Zoos and Aquariums’ (Zoo Aquarium Act), which changed zoos from a registration system to a permit system, was also passed. The amendment includes strengthening the establishment standards for current zoos and aquariums, and imposing dispositions such as suspension of business and fines if animals are not properly managed. Recently, as some small zoos and aquariums have been neglecting animals without feeding them during the closure period due to Corona 19, voices have emerged that the management of zoos and aquariums should be strengthened. A zoo operator who committed animal abuse, such as leaving a camel with a disease to die at a zoo in Daegu and using the carcass as food for wild beasts at another zoo he runs, was sentenced to a suspended prison sentence by the first trial court last September. There was also work.
A partial amendment to the Private School Act, which requires professors, associate professors, and assistant professors of private universities to be sentenced to fines of 3 million won or more for fraudulent crimes related to their duties while in office and to resign as a matter of course if the sentence is finalized; A partial amendment to the Military Civil Servant Personnel Act, which extends the statute of limitations for cases such as sexual harassment from three years to 10 years, also passed the plenary session of the National Assembly that day.