South Korean President Park Geun-hye yesterday named a former supreme court justice with a reputation for fighting corruption as prime minister to replace an incumbent who resigned over the government’s slow response to last month’s ferry disaster.
South Korean prime minister-designate Ahn Dai-hee will be mandated to oversee the reform of government structures, Park’s spokesman Min Kyung-wook said.
“We believe he is the person who will successfully restructure the country by pushing through reforms of bureaucracy and government, and normalizing what has been abnormal in our society,” Min said.
Park also accepted the resignation of the director of the South Korean National Intelligence Service and the presidential Blue House chief secretary for national security, Min said.
Ten days after the ferry Sewol capsized and sank on April 16 on a routine journey, former South Korean prime minister Chung Hong-won offered his resignation amid an outpouring of anger over the pace of the rescue operation. More than 300 passengers died, most of them schoolchildren.
Park said this week she would overhaul government structures and improve safety oversight to guard against any recurrence of preventible disasters. She announced the breakup of the coast guard for failing in its duties.
Ahn was a prosecutor before joining the bench in 2006 and won praise for investigating corruption by confidants of a former president and others in positions of power.
Authorities have offered a reward equivalent to nearly US$50,000 for the capture of Yoo Byung-un, the head of the family that owns the operator of the ferry that sank.
Police fanning out across the country handed out leaflets with Yoo’s photograph, which was also posted online. The manhunt has included a search of both Yoo’s house and the rural compound of a church that he co-founded, but he has eluded capture after ignoring summonses to appear for questioning.
On Wednesday, prosecutors and police spent hours combing the commune, but failed to find the 73-year-old fugitive wanted on charges of embezzling funds from ferry operator Chonghaejin Marine. Investigators see the alleged diversion of funds as one of the factors that led to the sinking and loss of life.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
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