South Korea’s foreign ministry violated regulations and granted special favors in hiring the daughter of the minister in charge of it, state auditors said yesterday.
Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan on Saturday offered to quit after being accused of nepotism over the controversial hiring last week of his daughter for a mid-level post.
Officials said South Korean President Lee Myung-bak would accept the resignation.
Yu was the fourth official in a week to offer to resign over ethical questions, dealing yet another political blow to Lee.
“We confirmed that the foreign ministry knew in advance that Yu’s daughter had applied and violated rules to have her hired,” the South Korean home ministry said in a statement after a probe by its auditors.
The foreign ministry violated rules in forming a five-member interview panel, including two senior ministry officials and three outsiders, it said.
The two ministry officials gave Yu’s daughter near-perfect scores while three interviewers gave other applicants more points, it said, adding some foreign ministry officials made comments favoring the daughter during application reviews.
In a statement yesterday, Yu apologized again for causing trouble to his ministry and colleagues, his office said.
“Various pending diplomatic issues and heavy tasks are piled up before us,” he said, urging ministry officials to handle them well by uniting around the first and second vice foreign ministers.
First Vice Foreign Minister Shin Kak-soo will serve as acting minister.
His departure comes at an awkward time, as South Korea prepares to host world leaders in November. Relations with North Korea are also tense after Seoul accused its neighbor of a deadly attack on a South Korean warship.
“In the past, the [Yu] case could have been dismissed as a longstanding practice,” Lee said on Sunday. “By the fair society standards, however, the scandal cannot be acceptable.”
Lee, who is midway through his five-year term, presented a “fair society” of equal opportunity as his new vision after carrying out a Cabinet reshuffle last month.
However, his nominees for prime minister and two other Cabinet members stepped down on Aug. 29 after they were accused of unethical behavior during parliamentary confirmation hearings.
AFGHAN CHILD: A court battle is ongoing over if the toddler can stay with Joshua Mast and his wife, who wanted ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ for her Major Joshua Mast, a US Marine whose adoption of an Afghan war orphan has spurred a years-long legal battle, is to remain on active duty after a three-member panel of Marines on Tuesday found that while he acted in a way unbecoming of an officer to bring home the baby girl, it did not warrant his separation from the military. Lawyers for the Marine Corps argued that Mast abused his position, disregarded orders of his superiors, mishandled classified information and improperly used a government computer in his fight over the child who was found orphaned on the battlefield in rural Afghanistan
Millions of dollars have poured into bets on who will win the US presidential election after a last-minute court ruling opened up gambling on the vote, upping the stakes on a too-close-to-call race between US Vice President Kamala Harris and former US president Donald Trump that has already put voters on edge. Contracts for a Harris victory were trading between 48 and 50 percent in favor of the Democrat on Friday on Interactive Brokers, a firm that has taken advantage of a legal opening created earlier this month in the country’s long running regulatory battle over election markets. With just a month
US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris is in “excellent health” and fit for the presidency, according to a medical report published by the White House on Saturday as she challenged her rival, former US president Donald Trump, to publish his own health records. “Vice President Harris remains in excellent health,” her physician Joshua Simmons said in the report, adding that she “possesses the physical and mental resiliency required to successfully execute the duties of the presidency.” Speaking to reporters ahead of a trip to North Carolina, Harris called Trump’s unwillingness to publish his records “a further example
RUSSIAN INPUT: Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov called Washington’s actions in Asia ‘destructive,’ accusing it of being the reason for the ‘militarization’ of Japan The US is concerned about China’s “increasingly dangerous and unlawful” activities in the disputed South China Sea, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told ASEAN leaders yesterday during an annual summit, and pledged that Washington would continue to uphold freedom of navigation in the region. The 10-member ASEAN meeting with Blinken followed a series of confrontations at sea between China and ASEAN members Philippines and Vietnam. “We are very concerned about China’s increasingly dangerous and unlawful activities in the South China Sea which have injured people, harm vessels from ASEAN nations and contradict commitments to peaceful resolutions of disputes,” said Blinken, who
RSS