Government blacklist stretched beyond culture, across South Korean society

Posted on : 2017-02-01 16:08 KST Modified on : 2019-10-19 20:29 KST
Database was created with more than 8,000 blacklisted figures and more than 3,000 organizations
Former Blue House Chief of Staff Kim Ki-choon is brought in for questioning on charges of writing and managing a government blacklist
Former Blue House Chief of Staff Kim Ki-choon is brought in for questioning on charges of writing and managing a government blacklist

The investigative team led by Special Prosecutor Park Young-soo has learned that the blacklist that the government of President Park Geun-hye used to suppress those on the left was composed and implemented not only in the areas of art and culture as initially believed but in fact across all areas of South Korean society. The Blue House set up a body called the Private Sector Organization Funding Task Force, with the participation of all the Blue House senior secretary offices, which began to filter out left-leaning figures by carrying out an exhaustive survey of 463 government committees. To accomplish this, the task force created the first draft of a database in May 2014 containing more than 8,000 left-leaning figures and more than 3,000 problematic organizations. The Special Prosecutor’s team has concluded that this entire process was ordered by Park and by her former Chief of Staff, Kim Ki-choon.

According to the charges that the Special Prosecutor’s team filed against former Culture Minister Kim Jong-deok, former Presidential Secretary for Political Affairs Shin Dong-cheol and former Vice Culture Minister Chung Kwan-joo on Jan. 31, composition of the blacklist began in earnest after Kim took office in Aug. 2013. During a meeting of secretaries and senior secretaries, Park gave orders to sideline figures on the left. “The goal of this government is a cultural renaissance,” she said, “and there are lots of problems in the left-leaning culture and arts establishment.”

“Pro-North Korea forces have dominated the cultural establishment for 15 years. We need to move quickly during the early phase of this administration,” Kim said during a meeting over which he presided. “At the moment, the president is working alone, and the cabinet is not making much progress on suppressing the left because her orders for ‘normalizing the abnormal’ are not having an effect.” Kim repeatedly ordered each secretary and senior secretary to carry out a complete survey of the funding being provided to figures on the left by each government department.

According to the Special Prosecutor’s investigation, Shin Dong-cheol and Blue House Senior Secretary for Political Affairs Park Jun-woo set up the Private Sector Organization Funding Task Force, consisting of all the Blue House senior secretary offices (covering areas including economy and finance, education, employment and labor, health and welfare, society and safety, administration and local government, public relations, and culture and sports). Beginning in Apr. 2014 and continuing for more than a month, the task force first catalogued 130 instances of “problematic funding” (worth 13.9 billion won; US$12 million) in these areas that was given to figures and organizations who had supported opposition presidential candidates (Moon Jae-in or Park Won-soon) or who had participated in campaigns against the government and then decided to reduce or eliminate funding to these figures and organizations on a semi-permanent basis. This list included the poet Ko Un, who is regarded as a contender for the Nobel Prize in literature. The task force also identified 26 left-leaning figures who were judges for government competitions and dismissed them from those positions.

Park Jun-woo and Shin Dong-cheol reportedly provided periodic reports to Kim about the task force’s operations. It was also confirmed that the two drafted a report titled “Record of Measures for Problematic Organizations and Management Plan,” which was reviewed by Kim and then submitted to Park Geun-hye. In June 2014, Park Jun-woo also briefed the incoming Blue House Senior Secretary for Political Affairs, former Culture Minister Cho Yoon-sun, on the task force’s operations, and the blacklist continued to be expanded until recently, the Special Prosecutor’s team determined.

By Kim Nam-il, staff reporter

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