Kim Wongyu, Oh Younggeun, Lee Sunghoon, and Lim Taehun Nominated as Candidates for Standing Commissioner of the Human Rights Commission

The Candidate Recommendation Committee for the National Human Rights Commission of Korea (the Recommendation Committee) announced on January 20 that it has recommended four candidates to the President to succeed Standing Commissioner Kim Yongwon.

Yonhap News Agency

The candidates selected by the Recommendation Committee are Kim Wongyu, Director of the Immigration Society Bureau of Gyeonggi Province; Oh Younggeun, Professor Emeritus at Hanyang University Law School; Lee Sunghoon, Adjunct Professor at the Graduate School of Civil and Peace Studies at Sungkonghoe University; and Lim Taehun, Director of the Center for Military Human Rights Korea.

The Recommendation Committee was composed of a total of seven members under the supervision of the Office of the President. The committee was chaired by Hwang Pilkyu, an attorney at the Public Interest Human Rights Law Foundation Gonggam. Other members included Choi Saeyan, Executive Director of the Joint Action for Correcting the National Human Rights Commission of Korea; Cho Jihun, Secretary-General of Lawyers for a Democratic Society; and Song Hyoseok, Director of Human Rights at the Korean Bar Association.

The Recommendation Committee held its first meeting on December 30 of last year and publicly recruited candidates until January 13 of this year. After document screening and interviews, the final pool of candidates was confirmed.

The President, who holds the authority to appoint, will select one of the recommended candidates as the new Standing Commissioner.