1. On June 26, the government of the Republic of Korea officially nominated Judge Chung Chang-ho of the Extraordinary Chamber in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) as a candidate for judge of the International Criminal Court (ICC) at the elections to take place in New York in December.

° In accordance with the ICC regulations, Judge Chung was selected as the candidate by the candidate recommendation committee comprised of the arbitrators in the Korean National Group of the Permanent Court of Arbitration and a representative of the ROK’s Court Administration Office.

° The ICC, composed of 18 judges, elects six judges every three years at the meeting of the Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute of the ICC. The judges to be elected in December will serve for nine years until 2024.

2. The ICC is the sole permanent international criminal tribunal to prosecute individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression and thereby seek to contribute to global peace and safety as well as the protection of human rights. The ROK government hopes that the Korean national will join the ICC, whose President is Song Sang-hyun from the ROK as well, and thereby play a role in realizing legal justice of the international community.

° Song Sang-hyun, after being elected as a member of the first-ever group of ICC judges in 2003, was re-elected in 2006. He has been serving as President of the ICC since March 2009, and he will retire from the Court in March 2015.

3. Judge Chung, after passing the bar exam, has served as a judge since 1993. In 2008, he was posted to Vienna as legal advisor at the Permanent Mission of the ROK in Austria and has been appointed as a judge of the ECCC by the UN at the ECCC since 2011. 


               Spokesperson and Deputy Minister for Public Relations of MOFA

* unofficial translation