Court Reduces Sentences for Kim Ki-chun and Cho Yoon-sun in 'Whitelist' Retrial

Former Blue House Chief of Staff Kim Ki-chun (left) and former Senior Secretary for Political Affairs Cho Yoon-sun. [Image source=Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Choi Seok-jin] Kim Ki-chun, former Chief of Staff at the Blue House, and Cho Yoon-sun, former Senior Secretary for Political Affairs, who were indicted in the illegal support (whitelist) case involving conservative groups during the Park Geun-hye administration, received reduced sentences in the retrial.

The Seoul High Court Criminal Division 6 (Presiding Judges Oh Seok-jun, Lee Jung-hwan, Jung Soo-jin) sentenced former Chief Kim to one year in prison on the 26th in the retrial on charges of abuse of power obstructing the exercise of rights. Previously, in the appellate trial before the retrial, former Chief Kim was sentenced to one year and six months in prison.

The court sentenced former Senior Secretary Cho to ten months in prison with a two-year probation on the same charges. Former Senior Secretary Cho also received a reduced sentence compared to the one-year prison sentence with two years probation he was given in the appellate trial before the retrial.

Former Administrative Officer Heo Hyun-jun was sentenced to ten months in prison, and former Senior Secretary for Political Affairs Hyun Ki-hwan was sentenced to one year and six months in prison. Former Senior Secretary Park Jun-woo and former Secretaries Shin Dong-chul, Oh Do-seong, and Jung Kwan-joo were all sentenced to ten months in prison with two years probation.

The court stated, “Since former Chief Kim and former Administrative Officer Heo have already been detained during the pretrial period for a time exceeding the sentence, we will not order their detention in court.”

Former Chief Kim and others were tried on charges of pressuring the Federation of Korean Industries from 2014 to 2016 to provide a total of 6.9 billion KRW to 33 pro-government conservative groups.

Earlier, the Supreme Court ruled in February of this year to overturn the original ruling and remand the case to the Seoul High Court, recognizing that the charge of abuse of power obstructing the exercise of rights was valid but that the charge of coercion could not be upheld.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.