President Lee Jae-myung appointed Choi Gil-soo as special inspector on the 23rd, ending a vacancy of about 10 years that had persisted since the Park Geun-hye administration and restoring the office's power to investigate the president's relatives and senior presidential aides.
Kang Yu-jung, senior presidential spokesperson, said in a notice to the press that Lee had approved the appointment. The special inspector is an independent body that investigates misconduct by the president's spouse, relatives within the fourth degree of kinship, and officials at or above the rank of senior secretary in the presidential secretariat. A day earlier, the National Assembly's Legislation and Judiciary Committee adopted a confirmation hearing report on Choi at its full committee meeting under a bipartisan agreement, with the report carrying both "qualified" and "unqualified" opinions.
With Choi's appointment, the staffing of the special inspector's office is expected to begin in earnest. Under the Special Inspector Act, the special inspector may appoint one deputy special inspector and up to 10 inspection officers, and may request the dispatch of up to 20 officials from related agencies including the Board of Audit and Inspection, the Public Prosecution Office, the Major Crimes Investigation Agency, the Korean National Police Agency and the National Tax Service. Once the inspection team is assembled, routine monitoring of figures close to the president, suspended for years, is also expected to resume.
The special inspector system was first introduced in March 2015 under the Park Geun-hye administration. Lee Seok-soo, the first special inspector, who was appointed on the recommendation of the Saenuri Party, the predecessor of the People Power Party, resigned in September 2016 after clashing with the presidential office while investigating allegations of misconduct by Woo Byung-woo, then senior presidential secretary for civil affairs. The post remained vacant under the Moon Jae-in and Yoon Suk-yeol administrations as the rival parties failed to recommend candidates. The relevant law remained in force, but the absence of a special inspector effectively halted the inspection function.
Choi completed the 23rd class of the Judicial Research and Training Institute and previously served as head of the special investigation division at the Gwangju District Prosecutors' Office, as a prosecutor in the inspection division of the Seoul High Prosecutors' Office, and as head of the major economic crime investigation unit at the Seoul Southern District Prosecutors' Office.