Cho Yoon-sun, ex-culture minister of South Korea, has been sentenced to two years in jail for her involvement in drawing up a blacklist of 10,000 people in the creative sectors during the government of the now impeached Park Geun-hye, Channel News Asia reports. She was initially acquitted and given a suspended sentence, but following an appeal by prosecutors, Cho, who had been on bail, was arrested in court. The blacklist, which came to light in 2016, is believed to have been aimed at ‘starving artists of state subsidies and private funding and placing them under state surveillance’. Prior to her role as culture minister, Cho was a policy advisor to Park. The court deemed it ‘reasonable’ to believe she had collaborated in ‘attempts to stop state supports for certain artists’.
24 January 2018
