Veteran general tapped for defense minister as Cabinet dispute grows — Ep. 148

All right, so let's get this show started, right? We now have a new defense minister nominee.

His name is Kang Jin-chul, a former general.

You're easing me in to the Korea Pro podcast with this story because there is a little bit of a North Korea connection that I'm sure we'll jump into in a little bit.

But why don't we start with who he is? I guess we can't say replacing straight away, possibly replacing because he hasn't been confirmed just yet.

No, the confirmations will not be taking place next week, but the week after.

And so that's when all the nominees would have to go to the National Assembly and get grilled by all the different lawmakers.

But Kang Jin-cheol, he is a very interesting man.

Firstly, the man is a former deputy commander of the joint combined forces.

And so he's got a lot of experience working with the American forces here in South Korea.

He is known as an alliance management sort of guy.

And he's also a former four-star general.

And so he has all of the bona fide credentials that typically are needed for defense ministers.

Now, I say the word typically because the guy he's replacing, Ahn Gi-baek, he is not from the military.

Right.

He caused quite a lot of waves when he was confirmed as defense minister.

Because as you mentioned, John, experience, credentials.

Yeah.

Now, to be fair, when he was nominated, Blue House made a big deal out of the fact that this is the first civilian to head the defense ministry in like 64 years.

And understandably, that was a big deal because, you know, just a few months prior, we had Yoon declare martial law.

And there was this whole thing about, oh, God, we need to enforce civilian control over the military.

And so that was a big issue at the time.

But a year later and President Lee saying like, eh, We're done with that.

Let's get back to a four-star general heading this joint.

Well, Kang's nomination, it comes at a really interesting time because as you've discussed on the podcast a few times recently, the administration is pursuing a couple of major reforms within the military.

So maybe you could just remind listeners maybe what these reforms are that are being pushed for.