Kim Yong-beom, South Korea’s presidential chief of staff for policy, said on September 1 that his resignation was meant to enable a swift phase shift after policy momentum stalled amid declining government approval ratings. President Lee Jae Myung accepted the move the same day, after Kim offered to step down on August 31 and had previously signaled his intention to leave multiple times. Kim said the administration was ending “Chapter 1” as it entered its second year and told the president that new people and new energy were needed to address social polarization. He rejected characterizations of the exit as a dismissal, saying the president had repeatedly urged him to stay before ultimately approving the departure. Kim acknowledged public anger over neglected aspects of stock-market and real-estate policy under exceptionally challenging domestic and international conditions, and said he proposed a middle-ground adjustment to the government’s real-estate tax reform plan, with the president issuing revision instructions on August 31. The departure was the first Cheong Wa Dae chief-of-staff-level exit since Lee took office and followed an August 30 Cabinet reshuffle, amid controversy over single-stock leveraged ETFs tied to Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix and continued pressure on financial regulators.