Vacancy drags on 5 months as Supreme Court narrows candidates for second open seat

The field of candidates to succeed Justice Lee Heung-gu, who retires in one month, has been narrowed to four. Chief Justice Jo Hee-dae plans to recommend one of them to President Lee Jae Myung for appointment. The vacancy left by former Justice Noh Tae-ak, who retired in March, has now stretched beyond five months after Cheong Wa Dae and the Supreme Court failed to bridge their differences over a successor nomination — raising the possibility that nominations for both seats could be made simultaneously.

According to the Supreme Court on Wednesday, the Supreme Court Justice Candidate Recommendation Committee — chaired by Park Eun-jeong, a professor at Ewha Womans University School of Law — narrowed a pool of 28 candidates for Justice Lee's successor to four on Tuesday: Kim Mun-gwan (62, 23rd bar class), chief judge of the Busan District Court; Kim Seong-su (57, 24th bar class), a senior judge at Seoul High Court; Kim Ye-yeong (51, 30th bar class), a senior judge at Seoul Southern District Court; and Kim Jeong-jung (60, 26th bar class), a senior judge at the Gwangju District Court. All four are sitting judges.

Justice Lee was appointed in September 2020 on the recommendation of then-Chief Justice Kim Myeong-su and serves until Sept. 7. The Supreme Court said Chief Justice Jo will begin releasing the shortlisted candidates' key rulings and work records on Tuesday and will solicit opinions from inside and outside the court through Friday before formally recommending one candidate to President Lee for appointment.

Legal circles are paying close attention to the fact that the shortlist for Justice Lee's successor has been drawn up even as no nomination has been made for former Justice Noh, who retired March 3. Chief Justice Jo received four candidates for Noh's seat from the recommendation committee on Jan. 21 but did not forward a nomination to the president — an unusual delay given that nominations have typically followed a candidate recommendation within about two weeks. Reports have suggested that Jo's preferred candidate and the one favored by Cheong Wa Dae differ, preventing the two sides from reaching agreement.

Analysts say that as the Supreme Court's caseload and trial delays continue to mount, Cheong Wa Dae and the court will inevitably have to address the Noh vacancy as part of the process of selecting Justice Lee's successor. If the two sides also fail to agree on Lee's replacement while Noh's seat remains empty, the disruption to court proceedings would be severe — and the deepening rift between the ruling camp and the judiciary could leave two Supreme Court seats vacant at the same time.

The Supreme Court's 12 justices — excluding the chief justice and the court administrator — are divided among three small benches to hear cases, but a gap has opened on those benches since Justice Noh Kyung-pil took office as the new court administrator on July 10. Chief Justice Jo had delayed filling the administrator post for more than four months after Justice Park Yeong-jae stepped down from the role on Feb. 27, a move aimed at minimizing disruption to the small benches' caseloads. After Park resigned in protest over the Democratic Party of Korea's push to pass the so-called "three judicial reform bills" — introducing a crime of judicial distortion, allowing appeals of court rulings to the Constitutional Court, and expanding the number of Supreme Court justices — Ki U-jong, the court administration's deputy chief, served in an acting capacity.