Chung Jom-sig, floor leader of the opposition People Power Party, challenged the ruling Democratic Party on the 16th to move against Chief Justice Jo Hee-de, saying it should "impeach Chief Justice Jo Hee-de if it has the confidence to do so." He warned that President Lee Jae-myung and the Democratic Party would face a severe backlash if they pursued an impeachment.
Chung made the remarks at a party meeting on strategy for the parliamentary audit of government agencies, held at the National Assembly on the 16th. "The moment the Democratic Party files a motion to impeach Chief Justice Jo, President Lee will be reduced to a dead duck," he said, adding that "the public will rise up and call for President Lee's impeachment."
Referring to impeachment talk within the ruling bloc, Chung said: "Extremists in the broader ruling camp whipped up the mood for impeaching Chief Justice Jo, and then the Democratic Party leadership started testing the waters on impeachment while talking about every available option." He called it "a relapse of the impeachment disease that is the Democratic Party's chronic ailment."
The remarks were seen as a counterpunch to Democratic Party leader Kim Min-seok, who had signaled the possibility of impeaching the chief justice. Appearing the same day on the party's official YouTube channel, Democratic Party TV, Kim said, "Broad demands for the impeachment of Chief Justice Jo are already emerging," and that the party has "put every issue on the table and begun discussing every method and avenue." He went on to say the party is "now pulling together, in comprehensive terms, the reasons why he must step down," foreshadowing a hard line against the chief justice.
Chung also rebutted Legislation Minister Jo Won-chul, who argued a day earlier that requesting a new nomination for a Supreme Court justice is not unconstitutional. "The sophistry that Legislation Minister Jo displayed at the parliamentary audit can itself be seen as political engineering aimed at impeaching the chief justice," he said. "Under Article 104, Paragraph 2 of the Constitution, the chief justice's power to nominate Supreme Court justices is an equal and independent authority alongside the National Assembly's power of consent and the president's power of appointment."
"What the president is doing now is not a simple request for a renewed nomination but coercion to nominate Judge Kim Min-ki," he added. "If the president can demand renewed nominations at will, he effectively gets to pick Supreme Court justices as he pleases."
At the meeting, lawmakers also raised the recent plunge in domestic stock prices and the controversy over the suspension of the National Pension Service's portfolio rebalancing, with a series of criticisms of the government's measures to prop up the market.
"The current situation is the result of the Lee Jae-myung government turning the normal into the abnormal," Chung said. "A costly bill has arrived for pushing the market up excessively — hastily introducing single-stock leveraged exchange-traded funds and even forcibly suspending the National Pension Service's rebalancing."
He also said: "The National Pension Service's fund is said to have seen 181 trillion won evaporate during the stock plunge in July, and mobilizing the public's retirement savings to prop up the market as if it were the administration's petty cash is a grave crime." He stressed that the party would "continue to get to the bottom of this by using every means available, including a parliamentary investigation and a special counsel."