President Yoon Suk Yeol hosted a historic bill-signing ceremony Thursday to elevate the Veterans Affairs Ministry to a full-fledged ministry and establish a government agency to support the Korean diaspora.

The event marks the first public bill-signing ceremony by a South Korean president to reorganize the government structure, according to Yoon's office. The elevation of the Veterans Affairs Ministry and creation of Overseas Koreans Agency will become effective early in June.

The ceremony by the conservative Yoon administration was designed to honor patriots and war veterans who sacrificed their lives for the country.

Yoon said the promotion of the Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs is aimed at calling on the Korean people to respect and honor those who fought to preserve the spirit of freedom.

"The freedom that national heroes preserved at the expense of their lives brought about the prosperity that we enjoy," Yoon said during the speech.

"The government will honor those who were called upon to take actions for the country with utmost courtesy, and the spirit of freedom will forever be cherished."

Attending the event were scores of bereaved families and dependents, including bereaved families of Kang Jae-gu, an Army officer who threw himself onto a grenade that slipped out of a trainee's hand to protect other trainees in 1965; descents of An Jung-geun, the independence activist who assassinated Japan's first prime minister, Ito Hirobumi, in 1909; bereaved families of Navy soldiers who died in artillery attacks by North Korea in 2002 and 2010; as well as two soldiers wounded by a landmine blast in the Demilitarized Zone in 2015.

With the elevation in June, the Veterans Affairs Ministry will become a full-fledged ministry headed by a minister. Contrary to what its name would imply, the governmental body has remained an administration led by a minister since the latest promotion by the former Moon Jae-in administration in 2017. It was previously an administration led by a vice minister -- not requiring parliamentary approval -- unlike a minister.

The promotion will also consolidate some veterans-related administrative tasks under the Prime Minister's Office to the new veterans affairs minister, according to the bill that passed the National Assembly earlier this week. This includes defining the scope of the change of status that has to be registered to the Veterans Affairs Ministry.

Some 568,600 patriots and veterans combined, and 265,800 bereaved family members of those who sacrificed their lives, were estimated to have been eligible for support by the governmental body, according to government data as of January.

Korea defines patriots and veterans as those who sacrificed their lives for the country's independence from colonial Japan's rule; for national defense from North Korea aggression; for the democracy movement; or for the protection of the people's lives or property.

Meanwhile, Yoon's office said the establishment of the new agency for ethnic Koreans living overseas will allow the policy for the Korean diaspora to be catered to for different needs by region.

Some 7.32 million ethnic Koreans lived overseas as of 2021, and some 2 million of them have voting rights in Korea.