Ahn Gyu-baek

Ahn Gyu-baek (Hangul: 안규백; Hanja: 安圭伯; born 29 April 1961) is a South Korean politician in the liberal Minjoo Party of Korea. He has been a member of the National Assembly for Dongdaemun, Seoul, since 2012, and previously served as a party list member from 2008 to 2012.

Ahn was appointed deputy floor leader of the New Politics Alliance for Democracy, the Minjoo Party's predecessor, on 12 October 2014,^[1] remaining in that position for seven months.^[2] He was praised by his Saenuri Party counterpart, Cho Hae-jin, who described him as having an "honest and upright" character and "always thinking of his country first".^{[lower-alpha 1]} He subsequently became head of strategy and public relations for the NPAD on 23 June 2015.^[3]

A ranking member of the Assembly's National Defense Committee,^[4] Ahn has been a critic of South Korea's defense policy. In 2011 he stated that draft-dodging had doubled under the Lee Myung-bak administration,^[5] and at the end of 2015 he attacked Park Geun-hye's government for signing an intelligence cooperation agreement with Japan and the United States, stating that "it is against all reason to give [Korea's] advanced information" to Japan given its colonial history in the peninsula and continuing territorial claims over the Liancourt Rocks.^[6] In June 2015, he introduced a bill to honor the veterans of the Second Battle of Yeonpyeong, an armed confrontation with North Korea that had taken place in 2002.^[7]

Born in Gochang County in North Jeolla, Ahn attended high school in Gwangju, and studied Eastern philosophy at Sungkyunkwan University as an undergraduate before earning a master's degree at the university's Department of Commerce and Trade.^[8][9]

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