You have to like how the former ROK Culture Minister was quietly released from jail during Chuseok:
Former culture minister Cho Yoon-sun was released from prison Saturday.
An appeals court sentenced her to two years on charges of ordering the blacklisting of cultural figures during the Park Geun-hye administration.
The third of three extended detention deadlines expired Friday at midnight, as she awaits a Supreme Court review of her case.
The blacklist she was convicted of ordering targeted individuals critical of the former president for exclusion from state support. [KBS World Radio]
It is interesting how she was tossed in jail for having a blacklist of artists the government would not give funding to, but the Moon administration has their own blacklist where they have cut funding to think tanks they don’t agree with and launched libel lawsuits to silence opposition media critics.
It will be interesting to see if any of these ex-aids of President Park were flipped to give evidence against her? These sentences makes me think that if the prosecutors cannot get President Park on the Samsung corruption charges then maybe they will convict her for knowing about this “cultural blacklist” her aides were running:
This combined photo shows former chief of staff Kim Ki-choon (L) and ex-Culture Minister Cho Yoon-sun entering the Seoul Central District Court in southern Seoul on July 27, 2017, to hear their sentencing. (Yonhap)
A former top aide of ousted president Park Geun-hye was sentenced to three years in jail on Thursday for running a list of culture figures critical of the government that barred them from state support.
The Seoul Central District Court doled out the sentence to former presidential chief of staff Kim Ki-choon after finding him guilty of abuse of power and perjury.
But Cho Yoon-sun, who served as the culture minister under the Park administration, was acquitted of her charges related to the so-called cultural blacklist and was released from prison after the court gave her a one-year jail term suspended for two years. The court found her guilty only of lying before the parliament at a hearing on the blacklist scandal last year.
The special counsel team investigating the case demanded seven years in prison for Kim and six years for Cho in the final hearing on July 3.
Kim’s lawyers immediately vowed to appeal the ruling, calling it “unjust.”
The court also sentenced five other former ranking government officials to 18 months to two years in jail, with some on probation, for their involvement in creating and managing the blacklist.
Former culture minister Kim Jong-deok was sentenced to two years in prison, while former presidential education and culture senior secretary Kim Sang-ryul was handed an 18-month imprisonment. Former presidential culture and sports secretary Kim So-young was given 18 months in jail, suspended for two years.
Former vice culture minister Chung Kwan-joo and ex-presidential aide Shin Dong-churl were sentenced to one year and a half in jail each.
The artist blacklist is part of a massive corruption scandal that removed Park from office in March. Kim and Cho were indicted in February for masterminding the creation of a register of nearly 10,000 artists, writers and filmmakers deemed unfriendly to the conservative administration. Those on the list were denied state subsidies. The accused have maintained their innocence. [Yonhap]
