Hearing report on PM appointee postponed until Tuesday

A parliamentary special committee on the confirmation hearings for Cabinet appointees on Friday postponed its planned adoption of a hearing report on Prime Minister-designate Chung Hong-won until Tuesday.

Won Yoo-cheol, chairman of the hearing committee, said the panel will resume the meeting at 1 p.m. Tuesday to “smoothly handle” the hearing report. The incoming president will proceed with her inauguration without completing the hearing procedures for her prime minister, let alone ministers.

If the committee adopts the hearing report Tuesday as planned, the National Assembly will hold a main session at 2 p.m. the same day to vote on a motion for a parliamentary agreement on Chung`s appointment.

Reports, however, say opposition parties delayed handling the hearing report to link it to the deliberation of a proposed bill on government reorganization.

Lawmakers also grilled the prime minister designate Friday on how his son got exempt from the draft because of a herniated intervertebral disc.

Park Cheol-ki, a medical professor at Seoul National University and a member of the judgment committee that granted the junior Chung’s exemption from military service, told parliament that the panel unanimously agreed on the exemption. A doctor of Oriental medicine who treated Chung`s son also said the latter received about 20 treatments over a seven-month period, adding that the patient was believed to have suffered a great deal of chronic waist pain.

irun@donga.com