Six former officials from South Korea’s ousted president Park Geun-hye’s government have been sentenced to prison for the blacklisting of cultural figures, The New York Times reports. Among those sentenced are Kim Ki-choon, the former chief of staff, who will serve three years for ‘abuse of power and perjury’, while the ex-culture minister Kim Jong-deok received two years in prison on similar charges. The public revelation of the blacklist played a key part in the impeachment of Park as public outrage at the censorship of artists led to accusations that the former president’s banning of those seen to be ‘unfriendly’ to her regime echoed her father’s (the military dictator Park Chung-hee) method of ruling the country.
In 2015 it was revealed that the number of people, including artists, writers and filmmakers, on Park’s blacklist had risen to nearly 10,000. The full list of names has not been publicly disclosed. On sentencing the ex-officials, the presiding judge Hwang Byeong-heon said during his ruling: ‘It’s against the Constitution to exclude artists from government support programs according to the taste of political power’.
28 July 2017
