Basic Income Party Rep. Yong Hye-in, nominee for gender equality and family minister, arrives for work at the National Assembly Members’ Office Building in Yeouido, western Seoul, on the morning of Aug. 31.NEWS1
Ahn Hai-ri
The author is an editorial writer at the JoongAng Ilbo.
“A tailor-made talent,” said Democratic Party (DP) Supreme Council member Choi Min-hee.
“A capable young politician who lacks nothing in the awareness and sensitivity expected of her generation,” said fellow Supreme Council member Seo Mi-hwa.
On Sunday, President Lee Jae Myung nominated Yong Hye-in, 36, a two-term proportional-representation lawmaker of the Basic Income Party, as gender equality and family minister. Yong has worked with Lee under the banner of “basic income” since his days as Gyeonggi governor.
The dispute intensified after Yong broke with convention and said she would not resign her Assembly seat upon joining the Cabinet.
As criticism mounted even within the broader ruling bloc that she was trying to preserve her party’s sole seat and the state subsidies attached to it, key DP figures, including party leader Kim Min-seok, rallied to her defense.
Now we know what kind of young talent the DP values: someone who benefits from loopholes and rule-bending, from satellite parties to self-nomination for a second proportional term, then uses self-expulsion to return to her party and preserve subsidies. She now seeks a Cabinet post while refusing the penalty — resigning her seat and forfeiting nearly 300 million won ($204,000) in quarterly subsidies.
Reform Party Rep. Lee Jun-seok has called her “Cho Kuk multiplied by Kang Sun-woo.”
Set aside her failed 2017 fundraising campaign to finance a European honeymoon before marrying Park Ki-hong, now the Basic Income Party’s deputy secretary general for strategy and planning. After becoming a lawmaker, she received official VIP airport treatment on a family trip. She brought her 59-day-old son to the Assembly, prompting complaints on an anonymous aides’ forum asking whether staff now had to care for babies too.
When criticized on KBS, she did not apologize. She said her son was “so cute” and asked whether colleagues could not watch him for an hour.
Former Justice Party Rep. Jang Hye-young has called Yong’s behavior a “political contradiction.” Last year, when Choi Hyuck-jin gained a proportional seat from a satellite party after presidential spokesperson Kang Yu-jung left the Assembly but chose to remain with the DP rather than return to the Basic Income Party, Yong denounced him as a “seat thief” and “political fraud.”
Yet former Justice Party Rep. Park Won-seok says Yong herself has “destroyed democratic principles.” Why should taxpayers accept 277.09 million won every quarter as what PPP Rep. Kim Jae-sub calls the “Basic Income Party’s basic income”?
When she filed disclosures in 2020 before entering the 21st National Assembly, her family’s total taxes over the preceding five years amounted to 2.82 million won. Excluding 1.62 million won in property taxes presumably levied on her parents’ real estate, income taxes totaled just 1.2 million won — an annual average of 240,000 won.
Yet the first-term proportional lawmaker proposed a universal basic income of 600,000 won per person per month, explaining that 70 percent of citizens would receive more than they paid while only the top 30 percent would bear additional taxes.
Her 2024 tax disclosure is more remarkable. From 2019 through 2023, encompassing her full four-year Assembly term, Yong, her husband — a party official whose organization receives state subsidies — and other family members paid a combined 12.78 million won in taxes.
A lawmaker earns roughly 150 million won annually. A salaried employee earning a comparable amount could easily pay 25 million won in taxes in a single year, not five. This is a remarkable model of thrift by any measure.
Meanwhile, Yong’s declared assets rose from 100.68 million won in 2020 to 543.83 million won in 2026. Along the way, she borrowed a combined 540 million won in three loans, bought and sold a home and moved twice between jeonse (lump-sum deposit) rentals, increasing her real estate-related assets to a 600 million won jeonse.
Her skills at minimizing taxes and building wealth deserve recognition. Why someone who appears to lack even the qualifications expected of a lawmaker should become a Cabinet minister is much harder to understand.
This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
