Minister-nominee Jeong Kyeong-doo of national defense. / Minister-nominee Sung Yun-mo of trade, industry and energy.

Minister-nominee Yoo Eun-hae of deputy prime minister-education. / Minister-nominee Jin Sum-mi of gender equality and family.

Minister-nominee Lee Jae-gap of employment and labor.

President Moon Jae-in made a mid-size cabinet reshuffle by replacing five ministers, including those for education, trade, industry and energy.

President Moon tapped Rep. Yoo Eun-hae of the Minju Party of Korea (MPK) as deputy prime minister and education minister. Commissioner Sung Yun-mo of the Korea Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) was named as minister of the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy (MOTIE), replacing Paik Un-gyu, who was under fire for lacking communication with the public over policies, including President Moon’s energy paradigm shift of weaning the nation off nuclear power.

Former President Lee Jae-kap of the Korea Workers’ Compensation & Welfare Service (WSI) was nominated as minister of the Ministry of Employment and Labor (MOEL). President Moon designated Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Jeong Kyeong-doo and Rep. Jin Sun-mi of the MPK as defense minister and minister of gender equality and family, respectively.

Cheong Wa Dae spokesman Kim Eui-kyeom said the cabinet reshuffle was designed to push reform in a speedy fashion and bring about achievements to the extent people can sense them.

Sources said the reshuffle amounted to a kind of reprimanding of ministers involved in controversies and lower job performances. His reshuffle of five ministers was aimed to help his government, in its second year in office, produce tangible outcomes. The ministries affected by the reshuffle included the MOEL and the MOTIE, who are being held responsible for sluggish employment and lacking of innovative growth.

President Moon’s new MOTIE and MOEL ministers may be construed as his determination to continue to push innovative growth in tandem with Deputy Prime Minister-Minister Kim Dong-yeon of the Ministry of Economy and Finance (MOEF) and Chairman Choi Jong-ku of the Financial Services Commission (FSC) who both are retained.

The first MOEL and MOTIE ministers of the President Moon’s government were Rep. Kim Young-joo, a labor unionist-turned lawmaker and Paik Un-gyu, an energy expert-cum professor, for pushing labor-friendly policies and the new energy paradigm shift. They were considered to be on the same wavelength of the current government, but the ministries were assessed for their poor performances.

In the latest reshuffle, President Moon tapped seasoned bureaucrats as the new MOEL and MOTIE ministers. MOTIE Minister-nominee Sung and MOEL Minister-designate Lee have been working more than 30 years in the ministries.

Born in Daejeon, MOTIE Minister-nominee Sung graduated from Daesung High School in Daejeon and Seoul National University Economics Department. He obtained a master’s degree from Seoul National University Graduate School of Public Administration and an economics doctorate from University of Missouri.

He passed the 32nd higher administrative examination and began to serve with the MOTIE in 1990. He is a veteran bureaucrat versed in industry policies as he was with such bureaus as the Industry Policy Bureau and the Industry Technology Bureau. Sung, who left the MOTIE in 2016, was transferred to minister to the Office of Government Policy Coordination at the Prime Minister’s Secretariat before he was appointed to be KIPO commissioner July 2017.

Explaining the rationale of new MOTIE Minister-nominee Sung, Cheong Wa Dae said Sung has a deep understating and expertise of the whole of the ministry and functions as a seasoned industry policy bureaucrat. He is evaluated to show excellent work execution, inside and outside communication capability and organization management capability. It said.

President Moon also conducted vice minister-level personnel change involving four vice ministers. Secretary General Wang Jung-hong of the Board of Audit and Inspection was appointed to be head of the Defense Acquisition Program Administration, while journalist Chung Jae-suk was nominated as the chief of the Cultural Heritage Administration.

Yang Hyang-ja, an ex-Samsung Electronics executive, was tapped as head of the Central Officials Training Institute, while Rhee Suk-soo, a prosecutor-turned-lawyer, was appointed to head the National Intelligence Service’s planning division.