Presidential office blacklisted 9,473 artists for political reasons

[dorawa.livejournal.com]

By Choi Ha-young of the Korea Times



Cheong Wa Dae blacklisted 9,473 artists who have expressed opposition to government policies or supported opposition politicians, and ordered related state agencies to disadvantage them in providing financial or other support, a local daily reported, Tuesday.

The report backs rumors about such a list, which have been prevalent in the art community here, as there have been cases of some artists or well-made art pieces being excluded from government support or competitions without clear reasons.

"Last May, I heard from officials at the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism that the so-called blacklist came from Cheong Wa Dae, and they have no choice but to follow the direction," the Hankook Ilbo, the sister paper of The Korea Times, quoted a source as saying.

The blacklist, which the source handed over to the newspaper, includes 594 artists who opposed a government enforcement ordinance about the Sewol ferry disaster, 754 authors who signed their names on a statement calling for the government to take responsibility for the disaster, 6,517 artists who declared their support for then opposition candidate Moon Jae-in during the 2012 presidential election and 1,608 artists who supported Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon during the 2014 mayoral election. Both Moon and Park are leading presidential candidates.

Famous movie directors Park Chan-wook and Kim Jee-woon as well as actress Kim Hye-soo and literary critic Hwang Hyun-san are on the list.

Poet-turned-lawmaker Do Jong-hwan of the main opposition Minjoo Party of Korea (MPK) also raised the issue during the Assembly audit, Monday, citing meeting minutes of the Arts Council Korea (ACK), an organization under the culture ministry dedicated to supporting artists.

In the minutes on May 29, 2015, then-ACK head Kwon Young-bin said, "It's hard to say… but we can't make decisions on our own."

Renowned theater director Park Geun-hyung had to give up a subsidy from ACK due to unclear pressure last year for his drama titled "All Soldiers are Pitiful," even though the ACK previously selected the drama, according to Do. In his previous play titled "Frog" in 2013, he criticized Park Chung Hee, President Park Geun-hye's father.

It is also suspected the government made another blacklist for teachers. On Monday, Do said two elementary school teachers, who signed up to oppose the government-authored history textbooks, were suddenly eliminated from overseas training opportunities.

The Ministry of Education canceled the participants citing an internal rule which reads, "people who raise social problems due to political activities or media reports may be eliminated from receiving government awards."

koreatimes


Have you ever been under the rule of a dictator, Omona?

Comments

[cafetin99.livejournal.com]

Yes, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.

[merlugd.livejournal.com]

At one point she was chosen by the 54% of the ppl of her country, it was her second running, so tht was not a dictorship. Even if she was very dictatorial, her government was more like the mafia than a dictorship, shes just a mafia boss tht was chosen by her ppl. Is sad but tht was even legal.

[soyunatetera.livejournal.com]

I was born in a dictatorship

[arashinomirai.livejournal.com]

Same

[otraera.livejournal.com]

Not me but my aunts and uncles(plus mom) on my mothers side did. They were young so I don't think they remember anything about it. My grandma would probably have more experience with that.

[smilla-sini.livejournal.com]

Moved from an authoritarian country a couple years ago (to live in another authoritarian country, it seems). My family still lives there.

On topic: if only opposition stopped acting like fools maybe this all wouldn't have happened.

[sheisagentleman.livejournal.com]

I'm mexican and while we haven't had a dictator since Díaz, our political situation is so fucked up. We always have to vote for the lesser evil. Our politicians murder people in masses (young college students are being murdered for asking for basic things. Ayotzinapa, for example. 43 young men who disappeared two years ago and the government still won't tell us or their family what happened.)

Recently a transgender sex worker was shot and killed and the police caught the 'man' who did it and yet he was set free.

There is no justice in this country. So many hard working people who deserve better and yet, we get people like Peña Nieto (who obviously won because the election was rigged).

[cafetin99.livejournal.com]

Los 43 de Ayotzinapa... y las miles de personas que sufren. Hay que ser bien hijos de su puta madre para cubrir eso. Espero que algun día puedan salir de eso. Y todos los países de América en general también. Acá en Arg, no tuvimos dictadores por titulo, pero si por acciones.

Ayotzinapa's 43 ... and the thousands of people who suffer. You have to be a loadtruck son of a bitch to cover that. I hope someday you guys can get out of it. And all American countries in general, too. Here in Argentina, we didn't have dictators by title, but by actions.

[premonitioner.livejournal.com]

the apple doesn't fall far from the tree

[kyrli.livejournal.com]

Yes. Soeharto in Indonesia. It happened way before I was born but I was born when he was still ruling but the story was horrible and the effect of it is still clear to this day. Even now, censorships/minority discrimination/fucked up political situation is still everywhere due to religious beliefs/people with higher power.

[anonymous-loljk.livejournal.com]

yass fellow indonesian here!
these last few years i have been seeing a lot of bumper stickers ("piye kabare le, isih penak jamanku biyen to?") and i keep wondering if it's just me or people are really just that ignorant.

[lesth.livejournal.com]

If there's one thing that shocked me in Seoul, it was how there'd always be a police patrol car next to ANY form of protest, day and night. I was simply not used to it but it felt like too much already. I never lived in a country under such watch and I believe that is nothing next to a strong confirmed 'democratic republic'.

[juhli.livejournal.com]

Queen Kim Yuna is probably on the list too:

[angela-derp-otp.livejournal.com]

oh my good she looks so mortified, I get anxiety just looking at her expression, poor girl :(

[winegums.livejournal.com]

I feel like we're from the same state.

[hitthoselightz.livejournal.com]

my country is slowly becoming one tbqh the people have barely any say and are brainwashed af
cant wait to get a british passport and never say im from there again

[cosmicjam.livejournal.com]

Jeez. Is their government even allowed to do this legally?

[dorawa.livejournal.com]

No lol! But so you think she cares? Just like her father etc

Can't wait til she blacklists me for this post

[angela-derp-otp.livejournal.com]

This situation is awful, it's really funny because after living were I live, my first thought was about their safety. I hope they stay safe and no physical harm is done to them.

[stroplok.livejournal.com]

yeah, my first thought was about their safety as well

[yuwkon.livejournal.com]

I wasn't born during the time of the conjugal dictatorship regime but based from what i've read, no words can describe how terrible the situation was. yikes i hope this doesn't lead to worse situations (ex: getting arrested).

[stroplok.livejournal.com]

i've only briefly lived under a dictator, because my parents moved away
but the rest of my family are still there
back when she was young my grandmother was imprisoned for her opposition, then 50 years later her son was too

[lizanka23.livejournal.com]

it's pretty typical for countries to not fund art that is critical of it but the blacklisting is definitely extreme. south korea is only a democracy in name just like a lot of other countries. you could say that about the usa as well since a lot of policy decisions are made by people with lots of money behind closed doors and its human rights violations against its own citizens. the police is bad in the usa because they usually escalate situations and use exceesive force to attack peaceful protesters but in korea they even do this to protests that have official permits and aren't even disruptive. i can't imagine what would happen if they blocked roads in korea like they do in the usa. although their police doesn't carry guns as far as i know...

[dorawa.livejournal.com]

In Korea? The military and police are the only ones who are allowed to have guns. They don't use them though, just other forms, like water cannons that kill farmers.

Sorry, I'm not very happy with the Korean government right now. I can't wait til next year when she's out and someone can fix this mess. I wish Ban Ki Moon would run :(

[fabulousdoll.livejournal.com]

I have been reading some things about this on twitter and I can't even start to imagine how frustating this must be.

Thank god I'm young enough to haven't been under a dictatorship but my parents and grandparents were. And it was kind of "interesting" how different it affected my father's mother and my mother's mother so they both had quite opposite visions of it.

[bea-chan22.livejournal.com]

I'm the only one who didn't experience dictatorship in our family, but who knows, with what our current President is doing he might be one. He's fighting almost the whole int'l community, compares himself to Hitler, and wants us not to receive foreign aid (but asking the same thing from China), wtf.

[rockerista03.livejournal.com]

"Do we really need freedom? Or do we need discipline?" (Mocha Uson, 2016)

MY GAAAAAHD I H8 DRAHGS sdjhsdh omg just thinking of Mocha Uson pisses me off lol

[rockerista03.livejournal.com]

Well not in name (because the last dictatorship in practice and in name that our country had was Ferdinand Marcos), but with the way our country's going...yikes. Plus after the fall of Marcos, problems that plagued the country then still plague the country now. Farmers and Leftists being killed or imprisoned, journalists murdered or disappeared, freedom of information still not a law, oligarchs running the country dry, etc.

[rockerista03.livejournal.com]

Also, just wanted to point out that dictatorships start out from "democracies". Ferdinand Marcos was voted into office in 1965 elections. Did our country know he was going to turn out into this hard-ass murderous dictator? No. Did we like living under his two-decade dictatorial rule? Absolutely fucking not.

idk about other countries or regions, but I feel like most Southeast Asian and Latin American countries (and I am basing this from my own experience as a Southeast Asian + all the research I've done for undergrad and post-grad so you're welcome to correct me if I'm wrong) still do have dictatorships up to this day, only that it's covered in this veil called "democracy".

[yixingsforehead.livejournal.com]

soviet style communists were also really keen to look democratic and all

like hey, you can vote for this person or that person or the third person, all from the same party, and all puppets, but hey, you have so many choices

[yixingsforehead.livejournal.com]

i was also born in a soviet-style communist country like some of the commenters above i guess.
one of my earliest memories is how i was complaining to my parents that people take town all the "pretty" red stars from buildings, gosh, how hard it must've been to try and explain to a really small kid what those red stars stood for.

the saddest, saddest thing is how education only became worse since then, and so my home country is turning back to worse than how it was. last weekend the government just shut down the only newspaper that wasn't pro-government. so probably there is no turning back now, they have all tools now to brainwash the country again into a single-party system.

propaganda through media is such a powerful thing penetrating all our thoughts, most people don't realize.

also no wonder history textbooks are mentioned in the article. those are the first ones to be rewritten when there's any political change.
like i remember we still had some soviet propaganda songs in the music note/textbook that we had to skip, cause that one wasn't rewritten yet, while history, literature, art history etc books were already rewritten

oh one more note regarding voting.... it seems that a lot of people have this idea that in authoritarian places people don't vote....? let me crush that illusion. actually some dictatorships are places where most people vote, cause they are forced to vote.

[rockerista03.livejournal.com]

actually some dictatorships are places where most people vote, cause they are forced to vote.

Yes!! And adding to that, elections are actually where these dictatorships start out. In our case, while we're a "democratic" country, vote-buying and vote-threatening are still very much a thing. Just last elections, we've had feedback that a good number of people weren't able to vote for the candidates they wanted because monetary support would stop coming to them if they didn't vote for the candidates dictated to them by the local government.

[seulgibear.livejournal.com]

this is awful :(

i was born after the downfall of communism, but we all grew up hearing about it all the time and what everyone went through. it's all you learn about in schools and even as a democracy now, the country still hasn't shaken off the communism roots and values. people still hold onto those things and a lot of young people aren't lucky to have older people or history teachers that talk about it in detail how bad it was even if the country had its golden era during communism as well. the mentality will keep getting perpetuated. i always rme extra hard at anyone who says communism is a good thing or actively wish for it to be reinstated.

[leighbee333.livejournal.com]

We have such a feckless, corporate-owned media, there's really no need for one

[torontok.livejournal.com]

My country's entire political history is president-coup-martial law-assassination, rinse and repeat.