Another political enemy of the Moon administration is getting additional jail time:
Kim Ki-choon, former chief of staff to ousted President Park Geun-hye, enters a courtroom at the Seoul Central District Court on Oct. 5, 2018. (Yonhap)
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.
Kim Ki-choon, former Cheong Wa Dae chief of staff, enters a Seoul court on June 8, 2018, to be tried on charges that he kept a secret register of artists deemed critical of the Park Geun-hye government to disadvantage them. (Yonhap)
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]
Reporters gather in front of the house of former presidential chief of staff Kim Ki-choon in Seoul on Nov. 28, 2016, as a passenger car comes out of it. The lawyer of Cha Eun-taek, an arrested associate of President Park Geun-hye’s indicted confidante Choi Soon-sil in an influence-peddling scandal, said the previous day Cha had met with Kim at his office in 2014 through an arrangement by Choi. The testimony by Kim Jong-min, Cha’s attorney, fueled suspicion about Kim’s involvement in the scandal. (Yonhap)
