President Lee Jae-myung will preside over an extraordinary Cabinet meeting on the 5th to discuss responses related to the Middle East situation. With signs that war is spreading across the Middle East after U.S. and Israeli airstrikes on Iran, and after President Donald Trump recently even mentioned the possibility of deploying ground troops to Iran, the government will review high oil prices and inflation across ministries.
According to Cheong Wa Dae on the 4th, the president will chair a Cabinet meeting the day after returning home that day from a four-day, three-night state visit to Singapore and the Philippines. Cabinet meetings are usually held every Tuesday, and the previous day Prime Minister Kim Min-seok led the meeting in place of the traveling president. However, as the Middle East situation intensifies, the president intends to preside directly to grasp the situation.
At the extraordinary Cabinet meeting, the Ministry of Economy and Finance and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs will brief on the Middle East situation and its global economic impact, after which the government plans to assess the effects on the domestic economy and discuss responses. Earlier, Chief of Staff Kang Hoon-sik also presided over a separate senior secretaries' meeting at Cheong Wa Dae the previous day and said, "In this grave situation where geopolitical uncertainty in the Middle East is expanding, the government must fulfill its essential functions so that the public can feel secure and go about their daily lives."
◇Even within the ruling party, calls to exercise veto on the "three judicial reform bills"
Attention is also on whether the promulgation of laws recently passed by the National Assembly's plenary session will be reviewed and approved at the extraordinary Cabinet meeting. Starting on the 24th of last month, the National Assembly went through a five-night, six-day filibuster (unlimited debate) and handled the following: ▲a special act to establish the integrated Gwangju-South Jeolla Special City ▲the third amendment to the Commercial Act that mandates cancellation of treasury shares ▲the three judicial reform bills (law distortion crime, appeal to the Constitutional Court for trial, and increasing the number of Supreme Court justices).
The opposition and the legal community view the three judicial reform bills as "bulletproof legislation" aimed at easing President Lee's various trial risks, and are calling for the exercise of the presidential right to request reconsideration (veto). In particular, regarding the law distortion crime, which says, "If a criminal case is adjudicated by distorting the law, the offender shall be punished by up to 10 years in prison or disqualification," even within the ruling party there are voices saying the president should veto it. Kwak Sang-eon, a Democratic Party lawmaker and the son-in-law of former President Roh Moo-hyun, cast a dissenting vote on the bill at last month's plenary session, saying it would "damage the constitutional order."