Yong Hye-in avoids direct answer on giving up parliamentary seat: “I will prepare well for the hearing”

Yong Hye-in avoided a direct answer when asked whether she would give up her parliamentary seat, saying she would prepare carefully for the confirmation hearing. She faces controversy over her stated intention to hold the gender equality and family ministerial post while retaining her proportional-representation seat from the Basic Income Party.

“I know there are many concerns and worries, and I will listen and listen again,” Yong told reporters as she arrived at her hearing preparation office in Seoul on Sept. 2. She said the hearing was not simply a place for her to speak alone, but a forum for communication with the public.

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I know there are many concerns and worries, and I will listen and listen again.

Yong thanked the public and the president, recalling that she had gone to work with her child five years earlier to highlight the difficulties of balancing work and childcare. She said that experience reminded her that people expected practical changes in their everyday lives.

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The foundation for the government’s tasks has been laid. Now is the time for speed and results.

She said the ministry had completed an organizational expansion and restructuring over the past year and restored the foundations for policy tools that had been weakened. The next tasks, she said, were to strengthen the ministry’s role in coordinating gender-equality, youth and family policies, work with other ministries and cooperate with parliament to complete pending laws and systems.

Yong also addressed criticism from women’s groups over her support for abolishing prosecutors’ supplementary investigation powers. She said she understood their concerns and would draw on her experience on the National Assembly’s Public Administration and Security Committee to listen to victims and consult closely with relevant ministries so their rights would not be harmed during supplementary or reinvestigation procedures.

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I will prove this self-evident truth through policy results, not words.