South Korea's ambassador to Australia resigns after less than a month in the job | The World

This stems from the death of a South Korean Marine last year who drowned during a search and rescue operation when there was major flooding in South Korea last year. It was revealed that that soldier was not equipped with a life jacket. So there was a major investigation into that and the investigator concluded that eight top officials should face criminal charges. Now the allegation against Lee Jong-sup, he was defence minister at the time. The allegation is that he interfered with this investigation into the matter and pressured investigators to drop or not reveal certain findings that they had concluded. Now in the end the report was handed to police and the investigator was charged with insubordination. Now Lee Jong-sup, the former defence minister, has denied any wrongdoing but he has been the subject of an investigation by the corruption watchdog that's known as the Corruption Investigation for High Ranking Officials and they said he had not been cleared by them to leave the country while they're investigating him. Despite that, Lee Jong-sup was announced as the new ambassador to Australia at the start of this month. He spent 10 days in Canberra before flying back home and as of today has officially resigned. So why has he offered his resignation now? Well politics really. This was just a really bad look for the government at the moment. It was quite a shock that he was appointed in the first place given that there was this investigation underway and South Korea is going through parliamentary elections in just a few weeks, in the middle of April, and the heat on the government would just not go away. The president, Yoon Suk-yool, his people power party, they want to form a majority of course after these parliamentary elections but the opposition were using this for political mileage. They were saying that the government was essentially trying to hide the former defence minister in Australia so he could not face justice at home and it's a particularly bad look because the president himself is a former prosecutor. Ultimately it was just too much pressure being applied both on the ambassador, on our former ambassador and the ruling and the president's party as well. So he has resigned and that's been accepted, confirmed just a few hours ago. The union that represents reserve marines has welcomed the decision. They say that it was hindering investigations by having this former defence minister in Australia and also was quite damaging to the relationship in their eyes between South Korea and Australia. So the union that represents reserve marines in South Korea has welcomed news that the former ambassador is now no longer in that post. James, thank you. Thanks Yvonne.