Editorial Confirmation Hearings Must Shift From 'Political Theater' to 'Competency Verification'

The public's gaze on this week's 'hearing super week' is cold. The National Assembly will hold confirmation hearings starting on the 15th for Deputy Prime Minister and Finance and Economy Minister candidate Lee Hyung-il, and Justice Minister candidate Kim Seung-won, and Small and Medium Venture Business Minister candidate Lee So-young, followed on the 16th by hearings for Defense Minister candidate Kang Shin-chul and Land, Infrastructure and Transport Minister candidate Hong Ji-seon. These are key government officials who must steer the helm of state affairs amid the people's hardship from high inflation and high interest rates and rapidly changing security and economic landscapes.

The verification of high-ranking public officials is a critical procedure that determines the direction of national policy and the lives of citizens. When the confirmation hearing system was first introduced in 2000, the public's expectations were clear. The intention was to end the ills of closed-door personnel appointments and transparently verify the policy philosophy and national governance capacity of public office candidates.

'Policy Review' Disappears, Replaced Only by Mud-Slinging Exposé Wars

However, over the past 20 years, the hearing chamber has not been a place to debate a vision for state governance. Under the pretext of personnel verification, only indiscriminate personal attacks and sensational exposés have dominated. As citizens who have placed their trust in representative democracy and cast their precious votes, it is unavoidable to feel shame, let alone dismay.

If important policy verification takes a backseat and attention remains focused throughout the hearing only on candidates' past remarks, activities, and personal suspicions unrelated to their duties, the vicious cycle will only entrench a 'talent drought' phenomenon in which capable experts with aspirations for public service shy away from candidacy itself for fear of personal insult.

The root cause of this vicious cycle lies in the structural limitation of addressing both morality verification and policy verification simultaneously in one place. When personal controversies that easily attract public attention spread, discussions of policy capacity necessary for the relevant position are instantly buried. With the addition of extreme partisan confrontation and political feuding between the ruling and opposition parties, confirmation hearings have degenerated into a mud-slinging fight over whether a candidate will 'fall from grace' or be 'protected.'

Separation of Morality and Policy Verification Is Urgent

Major countries overseas have erected institutional barriers to prevent such ills. In the United States, before a candidate appears at an open hearing, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and Office of Government Ethics (OGE) conduct thorough preliminary background investigations.

Personal morality and financial issues are first addressed through confidential review by the Senate standing committee, while open hearings focus on verifying national governance philosophy and policy capacity. Parliamentary democracies such as the United Kingdom and Germany likewise continuously evaluate candidates' policy implementation capabilities through rigorous internal party screening and regular standing committee activities in parliament.

Our confirmation hearings must also change their framework. The most urgent task is 'bifurcation of hearings (confidential morality verification + open policy verification).' Personal and morality issues of candidates should be handled discreetly by a subcommittee in closed session to first filter out disqualifying factors.

The main hearing, which is fully public, should be reformed to address only the capacity to perform public office and national governance vision. At the same time, the presidential office's preliminary verification system should be codified and strengthened to clearly assign responsibility for inadequate verification.

If Old Practices Repeat, the National Assembly Itself Will Face Qualification Scrutiny

In this hearing, we must abandon wasteful political character assassination and return to the original, proper method of discerning the policy philosophy and professional competency necessary to resolve national challenges as heads of each ministry. If old practices of mere shouting and personal attacks are repeated once more, it will only expose the lack of qualification of the hearing committee members themselves to the public, not the candidates.

The National Assembly must keep in mind that if it cannot abandon old practices, it will only intensify the public's anger toward the lack of qualifications and backwardness of the entire political sphere and demands for fundamental political reform.