Cheong Hyungsik

Cheong was born on September 2, 1961, in Yanggu, Gangwon. After graduating from Seoul High School in 1980, Cheong attended Seoul National University College of Law and graduated in 1985. In 1986, Cheong was exempted from military service after being diagnosed with a bone infection. In 1990, Cheong completed an LLM program at Seoul National University. == Early judicial career ==

Upon graduation from the Judicial Research and Training Institute, Cheong was hired as a judge for the in March 1988. In 2010, Cheong returned to the Suwon District Court as the chief of the . In 2021, Cheong joined the as a chief judge before returning to the Daejeon High Court as a chief justice in 2023. Jeong Yeon-ju, who was first appointed as president of KBS in 2003, was fired by President Lee on August 11, 2008, after requests for his dismissal were made by the Board of Audit and Inspection and KBS's own board of directors. In 1978, Cho, who was then a student at Seoul National University, was indicted for creating and distributing leaflets that criticized the Yushin Constitution and sentenced to two years in prison. Cheong went on to state "the state's emergency powers should be exercised within the minimum necessary limits when the country is in a grave crisis, but the situation at the time the emergency measures were declared did not correspond to a grave national crisis as an emergency, so it lacked the requirements stipulated in the Constitution." In July 2010, Han was indicted on charges of receiving 900 million won from Hanshin Construction CEO Han Man-ho during the 2007 presidential primaries. At the conclusion of the first trial, the court found Han Myeong-sook not guilty of the charges on the grounds that Han Man-ho's initial statement to the prosecution lacked credibility. In 2015, the Supreme Court confirmed Cheong's decision. The initial five-year sentence had been imposed by the Seoul Central District Court after they convicted Lee of perjury, embezzlement, and bribery in August 2017. The conviction was based on allegations that Lee had offered $30 million USD in bribes to President Park Geun-hye and Choi Soon-sil in exchange for securing their support in Lee's bid to strengthen control over Samsung. In reducing Lee's sentence, Cheong overturned the district court's rulings on some of the bribery charges and stated "it is difficult to acknowledge that there was a comprehensive issue of Samsung's succession process." In the aftermath of Lee's appeal trial, Cheong faced criticism from the legal community and members of the public who believed the sentence imposed on Lee was too lenient. A petition on the Blue House National Petition Bulletin Board that requested a special audit of Cheong gained over 200,000 signatures within three days of its posting. == Constitutional Court of South Korea (2023–present) ==

Nomination On November 16, 2023, President Yoon Suk Yeol nominated Cheong as the replacement for Justice Yoo Nam-seok, who retired from the Constitutional Court on November 10, 2023. On December 12, 2023, the National Assembly held a hearing on Cheong's nomination. During the hearing, Cheong evaluated the increase in impeachment proceedings as "the process of the Constitution coming to life" while declining to comment on specific impeachment cases pending before the Constitutional Court. Cheong also remarked that "homosexuality is a realm of the right to self-determination, but it can be restricted to the extent necessary." In response, Cheong stated "if it is an organization with clear colors, I think I (as a constitutional judge) should not do that." While legislators from the ruling People Power Party deemed Cheong to be qualified, legislators from the opposition Democratic Party found Cheong to be unqualified based on his prior rulings in the Lee Jae-yong case. On the same day, Cheong received his official letter of appointment from President Yoon and attended an inauguration ceremony at the Constitutional Court on December 19, 2023. Tenure When Cheong, who was classified as a conservative justice, joined the Constitutional Court in December 2023, the court was reorganized as a conservative-moderate majority court for the first time since 2019. Since joining the court, media outlets have consistently classified him as a conservative. Impeachment rulings On May 30, 2024, Cheong joined a 5–4 majority of the Constitutional Court in dismissing the impeachment of Ahn Dong-wan, a deputy chief prosecutor from the . The National Assembly had initially impeached Ahn for the retaliatory prosecution of a Seoul official. Medical Act On February 28, 2024, Cheong was part of a 6–3 majority of the Constitutional Court that held the Medical Act's ban on revealing the sex of a fetus until the 32nd week of pregnancy was unconstitutional. The court held restricting gender disclosure was no longer reasonable as the preference for male children has declined as evidenced by South Korea's sex ratio at birth reaching the normal range in 2014. The majority found that the tax provisions had a legitimate purpose of promoting price stability and were not excessive. While Cheong joined four justices in also finding the Act's emissions reduction targets for 2030 to be inadequate and unconstitutional, they lacked the six votes required to overturn this portion of the Act. == Personal life ==

Cheong is married to the youngest sister of , the current chairwoman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and has two sons. and brother-in-law of former Supreme Court Justice . == See also ==