South Korean Ambassador to Australia Lee Jong-sup stepped down on Friday, less than a month after he was named for the job, amid mounting criticism of his appointment and departure that came even though he was subject to an investigation. Lee\u2019s resignation also came before South Koreans went to the polls on April 10 to elect lawmakers. The controversy surrounding Lee has become a hot-button issue amid growing negative public sentiment and concerns even being raised from within the ruling party bloc, Yonhap news agency reported.<\/p>\n
The foreign ministry said it accepted Lee\u2019s resignation. The confirmation came hours after Lee\u2019s lawyer said the ambassador expressed his intent to step down to the foreign minister. \u201cAs Ambassador Lee Jong-sup strongly expressed his intent to resign, the ministry reported it to the president, who has the appointment power, and decided to accept the resignation,\u201d the ministry said in a message to the media. Lee has been under intense scrutiny since he was named the ambassador in Canberra early this month, after revelations that he had been banned from leaving the country over the investigation into allegations that he interfered in an internal military probe into a Marine\u2019s death last year.<\/p>\n
Critics have accused Lee of running away from the investigation and leaving the country to take up the job shortly after the exit ban on him was lifted. Lee has denied any wrongdoing. Lee returned home on March 21, 11 days after he assumed the job, to attend a defense cooperation meeting of South Korean ambassadors to six countries, including Australia. But questions arose that the meeting could have been organized to give Lee a pretext to come back home. Lee plans to stay in Seoul to do all he can to \u201cstrongly respond to all procedures,\u201d according to Lee\u2019s lawyer, Kim Jae-hoon.<\/p>\n
The lawyer said that Lee repeatedly called for the anti-corruption investigation office to quickly summon him for questioning, but he still has not heard from the office. Some have speculated that the presidential office ordered Lee to return home as the public sentiment was worsening ahead of the April elections. Since his return home last week, Lee has met with foreign and defense ministers and taken part in a series of meetings with related ministries and government agencies that the ministry said took place to discuss defense cooperation with the six ambassadors.<\/p>\n
Lee was reportedly absent from the ambassadors\u2019 meeting with the state trade insurance agency that he was supposed to attend earlier in the day. Following Lee\u2019s resignation, the Australian Embassy in Seoul said the country expects to continue to work together with the succeeding ambassador. \u201cAustralia greatly values its relationship with the Republic of Korea, and looks forward to working in close cooperation with the next ROK Ambassador to Australia across all areas of our comprehensive strategic partnership,\u201d the embassy said in response to a media query.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
South Korean Ambassador to Australia Lee Jong-sup stepped down on Friday, less than a month after he was named for\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":36088,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[186],"tags":[10330,533,12079,1539,4836,4806,11163,5866,150,12077,12078,12080],"class_list":["post-36086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world","tag-alleged-interference","tag-ambassador","tag-anti-corruption","tag-australia","tag-criticism","tag-diplomacy","tag-investogation","tag-scrutiny","tag-south-korea","tag-south-korean-ambassador-to-australia-lee-jong-sup","tag-south-korean-marines","tag-strategic-partnership"],"reading_time":"3 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36086"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36086\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}