Former Park Administration Chief of Staff Sentenced to Prison for Providing Funding to Government Friendly Organizations
|Another political enemy of the Moon administration is getting additional jail time:
A Seoul court sentenced Kim Ki-choon, a former chief of staff to ousted President Park Geun-hye, to a 1 1/2-year prison term Friday for pressuring a major business lobby to provide funds to conservative organizations friendly to the Park administration.
The Seoul Central District Court also sentenced Cho Yoon-sun, a former culture minister and senior political affairs secretary to Park, to one year in prison, to be suspended for two years, for her role in having money funneled to pro-government organizations on the so-called whitelist.
Kim was put in jail following the verdict.
The sentences are in addition to prison terms of four and two years that Kim and Cho were given, respectively, in a separate “blacklist” scandal that centers on allegations that the Park government kept a secret register of artists critical of the administration and disadvantaged them in various ways.
The blacklist case is pending at the Supreme Court. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but if anything comes back to haunt the Moon administration if conservatives regain power it is going to be this. The Moon administration has its own blacklist where they have cut funding to organizations that advocate for North Korean human rights and resettle North Korean refugees. Funding has also been cut to think tanks that won’t fire conservatives.
The biggest benefactor of the Moon administration’s white list has been the Kim regime in North Korea. The Moon administration is even pressuring Samsung and other conglomerates to invest billions into North Korea. If conservatives can go to jail for whilelists and blacklists then this sets a precedent for the Korean left to go to jail as well.
Did Presidents Lee and Pak play this game or is this something Moon started?
If Moon’s cabinet is smart, they will all leave Korea to non-extradition countries after the next election.
And if the next conservative leader is smart, he/she will revoke passports of same.
Moon’s cabinet will be in a re-education center somewhere near the Chinese border come next election.