President Lee Jae Myung has nominated four-term Democratic Party (DP) lawmaker Park Hong-keun to become the first head of South Korea’s newly established Ministry of Planning and Budget (MPB), placing a veteran parliamentary strategist at the center of the administration’s fiscal coordination system.

A longtime ally of the president, Park served as Lee’s chief of staff during the 2022 presidential campaign and later led the DP’s floor leadership while Lee was party chairman. He has chaired the National Assembly’s Special Committee on Budget and Accounts and the Steering Committee, and most recently headed the planning division of the State Affairs