Cheong Wa Dae lashes out at chief justice over refusal to re-nominate Supreme Court justice

Cheong Wa Dae reacted with sharp anger Wednesday after Chief Justice Jo Hee-dae announced he would refuse to re-nominate a candidate to fill the Supreme Court seat vacated by former Justice Noh Tae-ak, calling his position "contrary to the Constitution" and accusing him of "distorting the facts."

The presidential office issued two successive press notices Tuesday sharply criticizing Jo after he announced his refusal to re-nominate a Supreme Court justice candidate.

In the first notice, Cheong Wa Dae said it expressed "deep regret" over the chief justice's announcement that he would not re-nominate a successor to former Justice Noh despite the president having returned the previous nomination.

The office then said that more than six months had passed since Noh's retirement, and that the vacancy was directly harming citizens' constitutional right to a speedy trial, given that each sitting justice handles between 3,500 and 4,600 cases a year.

Cheong Wa Dae particularly took aim at the constitutional relationship between the chief justice's power of nomination and the president's power of appointment, saying Jo's position amounted to placing the nomination power above the appointment power — a stance it said was "contrary to the Constitution of the Republic of Korea."

The office went on to say that requiring the president to automatically confirm whomever the chief justice nominates "would render meaningless the appointment power of a president elected by the people."

Cheong Wa Dae said the chief justice "must squarely face the fact that a prolonged vacancy on the Supreme Court translates into harm for the public" and urged him to stop allowing the situation to continue.

In its second press notice, Cheong Wa Dae rebutted point by point the Supreme Court's suggestion that the president's request for re-nomination was procedurally flawed, and urged the chief justice to promptly put forward a new candidate.

The presidential office said the request had been transmitted as an official electronic document through normal departmental channels, and rebuffed claims that the document had not explicitly stated a "refusal," saying the constitutional basis for rejecting the previous nomination had been clearly set out in the communication.

"What the public expects of the chief justice is surely not that he see only what he wants to see and hear only what he wants to hear under the banner of judicial independence," Cheong Wa Dae said, adding that the Constitution guarantees every citizen the right to a speedy trial. The office called on Jo to "faithfully fulfill his obligation to staff constitutional institutions so that citizens' fundamental constitutional rights are no longer infringed."

Meanwhile, some reports suggested Cheong Wa Dae was considering filing a constitutional dispute with the Constitutional Court over Jo's refusal to re-nominate. However, the presidential office said in its notice that it was "not reviewing a constitutional dispute filing."