Sung Ki-hong, senior presidential secretary for public relations and communication, said in a briefing that day, "There were additional allegations raised, so we went through a process of checking them, but the additional vetting found nothing different from the original vetting results." He added, "The presidential office plans to send the confirmation hearing request for Serious Crimes Investigation Agency chief nominee Kim Ji-yong to the National Assembly within the next day or two."
Sung said, "Among the allegations raised in some quarters, there were also claims that were not true or amounted to vague speculation," explaining, "We judged that at this stage they are not serious enough to deprive the nominee of the chance to explain himself at a National Assembly confirmation hearing."
The presidential office pushed back in particular against claims characterizing Kim as a "pro-Yoon prosecutor," calling them "completely inaccurate." It cited, among other grounds, that Kim was promoted to chief prosecutor under the Moon Jae-in administration and that while serving as head of the criminal affairs bureau at the Supreme Prosecutors' Office he ordered a reinvestigation into the case involving Choi Eun-soon, the mother-in-law of former President Yoon Suk Yeol.
The office also rebutted point by point, citing the facts, the allegations raised against Kim over his participation in a statement calling for reconsideration of disciplinary action against the former president, the abuse-of-authority assault case involving former senior prosecutor Jung Jin-woong, the case of former Vice Justice Minister Kim Hak-ui, and the forensics controversy in the Channel A case.
On opposition to a former prosecutor heading the Serious Crimes Investigation Agency, Sung said, "We cannot exclude all prosecutors from state functions just because some bad prosecutors existed," adding, "That is not reform but closer to destruction in the name of reform."
