DP demands acting President Choi appoint Ma to Constitutional Court after ruling
Published: 28 Feb. 2025, 15:54
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- MICHAEL LEE
- lee.junhyuk@joongang.co.kr
![Democratic Party floor leader Rep. Park Chan-dae, center, speaks at a meeting of the party's senior figures at the National Assembly in Yeouido, western Seoul, on Feb. 28. [YONHAP]](https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/data/photo/2025/02/28/90af837d-31e6-4c20-86e5-da751f744e29.jpg)
Democratic Party floor leader Rep. Park Chan-dae, center, speaks at a meeting of the party's senior figures at the National Assembly in Yeouido, western Seoul, on Feb. 28. [YONHAP]
The liberal Democratic Party (DP) demanded that acting President Choi Sang-mok appoint Ma Eun-hyuk as the ninth justice of the Constitutional Court on Friday, a day after the court ruled his refusal to approve Ma's nomination was illegal.
Speaking at a meeting of senior DP figures, floor leader Rep. Park Chan-dae warned Choi that the party would “not recognize him as the acting president if he refuses to appoint Ma as a justice [of the Constitutional Court].”
Park said the court’s unanimous 8-0 ruling that Choi had infringed on the legislature’s right to name justices to its nine-member bench “reaffirmed the principle that neither the president nor the acting president has the right to not appoint justices recommended by the National Assembly.”
The DP floor leader further accused Choi of “acting as a monarch who believes himself to be above the Constitution” and urged him “to wake up from this delusion.”
By contrast, members of the conservative People Power Party (PPP) called on Choi to continue deferring Ma’s appointment, citing the court’s decision that it could not force the acting president to approve nominations.
In a post uploaded to his Facebook account on Thursday, PPP floor leader Rep. Kweon Seong-dong expressed “deep disappointment” over the ruling and reiterated his party’s stance that the appointment of justices “must be supported by bipartisan consensus to safeguard the Constitutional Court’s political neutrality and independence.”
Kweon argued that the court “had ignored this principle and overlooked the fact that Ma’s nomination was unilaterally decided” by the DP using its parliamentary majority.
He also questioned the validity of the competence dispute over Choi’s refusal to appoint Ma, noting that Speaker Woo Won-shik initially filed it with the court without a corresponding parliamentary motion, which was belatedly passed by the Assembly on Feb. 14.
Kweon called on Choi to delay appointing Ma to prevent the potential ninth justice from potentially partaking in the court’s deliberations on the impeachment cases against President Yoon Suk Seoul and Prime Minister Han Duck-soo.
Article 301 of the Criminal Procedure Act stipulates that a trial must be re-run when a judge is changed or added after proceedings have started.
However, the article says this requirement does not apply in cases where only the verdict has yet to be announced.
The Constitutional Court has also previously issued an opinion that some provisions of the law do not fully apply to impeachment trials, which it says differ in nature from regular criminal trials.
BY MICHAEL LEE [lee.junhyuk@joongang.co.kr]
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
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