Cho Jae-cheon

Cho Jae-cheon (曺在千, November 19, 1912 – July 5, 1970) was a politician of South Korea.

During the Japanese colonial period, he passed the bar examination and worked as a judge. Because of this, he was listed as a pro-Japanese collaborator in the Dictionary of Pro-Japanese Collaborators compiled by the Institute for Research in Collaborationist Activities. After liberation, he served as head of the North Gyeongsang Provincial Police Bureau and others, and in the 1954 general election he ran as a candidate of the Democratic Nationalist Party in Dalseong, North Gyeongsang, and was elected to the 3rd House of Representatives, thereby entering politics. In the 1956 presidential and vice-presidential election, he was an anti-communist conservative who played an active role as publicity director of the Democratic Party under the campaign slogan "We can't live like this, let's change." In 1958 he was elected to the 4th House of Representatives from Daegu, and in 1960, during the Second Republic, he was elected to the 5th House of Representatives. He served as Minister of Justice and then, in 1961, as Minister of Home Affairs, but after the May 16 military coup, party activities were banned and he briefly opened a law practice. In 1963, political restrictions were lifted, and that year he was elected to the 6th National Assembly as a national constituency member (Democratic Party), where he took the lead in uniting the opposition parties. In 1965 he served as president of the Democratic Party. He opposed Park Chung-hee, chairman of the Supreme Council for National Reconstruction, and continually insisted that Hwang Tae-sung was still alive.

Education

• Dropped out of the Faculty of Law at Chuo University (中央大学), Japan

Career

• Judge, prosecutor
• Head of the North Gyeongsang Provincial Police Bureau, Governor of North Gyeongsang Province
• Minister of Justice, Minister of Home Affairs
• Member of the National Assembly