SEOUL– President Yoon Suk-yeol on Friday named a former prosecutor as a deputy director of the National Intelligence Service, his office said, filling a vacancy created earlier this week by the resignation of one of his confidants.
Kim Nam-woo, who has been working as a lawyer since leaving the prosecution in 2020, was appointed the new deputy director for planning and coordination, three days after Jo Sang-jun resigned over what the presidential office and the NIS said were health and other personal reasons.
Jo’s departure sparked a flurry of speculation as to why he quit because it came only four months after he took the job and a day before he was due to attend a parliamentary audit of the spy agency.
Rumors had it that Jo had clashed with NIS Director Kim Kyou-hyun over personnel issues or that he may have been caught drunk driving or involved in an irregularity.
Source: Yonhap News Agency