Source: Seoul Shinmun · 정치

What happened

According to Seoul Shinmun, People Power Party leader Jang Dong-hyuk on Aug. 23 escalated his attack on the fight over Chief Justice Jo Hee-dae’s Supreme Court justice nomination. In a Facebook post, he accused the Blue House and the Democratic Party of treating an “outrageous” demand as ordinary while “rather threatening to impeach the chief justice” — language he called fit for a presence that “should disappear from a democratic country.”

Jang framed the dispute as a constitutional boundary question: who may shape the top court’s membership, and whether the executive may steer nominations before they reach the National Assembly.

The breakdown

Jang said the Constitution’s requirements for appointing Supreme Court justices are “clear” — the chief justice’s nomination and National Assembly consent, “and nothing else.” Nomination, he argued, is the chief justice’s authority; oversight belongs to the Assembly. “That is sufficient,” he wrote.

He stressed that the text nowhere requires the president to consult or coordinate in advance — and that the president has “even less” authority to tell the court whom to nominate or block. If the Supreme Court were to nominate at presidential direction, he said, judicial independence would collapse — “unconstitutional among unconstitutionals.”

The rhetoric sharpened from institutional theory to personal indictment. “If the president tries to appoint Supreme Court justices to his own taste, that day rule of law ends,” Jang wrote. If the aim were to declare the president’s own crimes not guilty, he added, “that is exactly ‘dictatorship.’”

On the broader political arc, Jang claimed everything began with demands for a trial suspension involving President Lee Jae Myung. The judiciary, he said, is “already trampled under the dictator’s feet” and must “stand up with the only weapon it has — ‘resuming trials.’” If the courts do not fight now, he warned, “democracy will eventually end.”

Seoul Shinmun places the remarks inside the ongoing nomination controversy around Jo’s Supreme Court picks — a fight that has already drawn impeachment talk from ruling-bloc lawmakers and counter-pressure from the opposition.

Why it matters outside Korea

Foreign investors, diplomats, and Korea-based legal teams treat Supreme Court appointments as a stress test for institutional independence — especially when criminal cases involving senior politicians remain live. When a major party leader publicly warns that executive influence over nominations would end rule of law, the signal is not a single Facebook post but a claim that Korea’s separation-of-powers bargain is under active contest.

What travelers and expats should watch

• Do not treat social-media attacks as a court shutdown. Jang’s post is political framing, not a judicial order; routine civil, administrative, and lower-court work continues unless courts announce otherwise.
• If you follow Lee Jae Myung trial news for business or compliance reasons, track “trial resumption” language separately from vacancy fights. Opposition leaders are tying nomination politics to criminal docket timing — conflating the two breeds bad forecasts for case schedules.
• Watch National Assembly consent calendars, not just Blue House statements. Supreme Court justices still need Assembly approval after nomination; procedural delays there matter more for vacancy duration than Facebook rhetoric alone.

Context

Read this as an opposition leader drawing a bright constitutional line around chief-justice nominations, not as proof that the president already controls the Supreme Court roster or that impeachment votes are scheduled. The non-wire insight: Jang is trying to shift the story from “who should Jo nominate next” to “whether any executive coordination would itself break the judiciary” — while linking that fight to trial timing in Lee’s cases, a pairing designed to mobilize conservative voters who see both as one crisis.

Source

Seoul Shinmun: 장동혁 “대통령 입맛대로 대법관 임명하면 법치주의 끝” — Korean original; paraphrased for briefing; read the original for full detail.