A group of artists continues to camp out in Gwanghwamun Square, displaying political art on the streets. Protestors decried this insidious return of censorship and state surveillance. The Busan International Film Festival, one of the largest film festivals in Asia, lost roughly half of its subsidy in 2015 after it had screened the documentary Diving Bell against the government’s demands. Since most of the artistic community opposed President Park since the election, the blacklist comprised virtually every social-minded theatre artist currently working in Korea, even including major figures with an international profile such as Lee Youn-Taek, not to mention celebrity actors such as Song Kang-Ho and Kim Hye-Soo. The blacklist scandal made international headlines (for example, in the Economist and the New York Times) because of its relevance to the impeachment trials that are currently underway in the Constitutional Court. The immense scale and systematic execution of this blacklist, which includes the names and occupations of over nine thousand individuals, came to light during the extensive investigations into President Park and secret advisor Choi Soon-Sil’s illegal activities. This assumption melted away in late 2016 when it was shockingly revealed that the Ministry of Culture, Tourism, and Sports kept a secret list of artists to exclude from all public funding. As democracy stabilized in South Korea, freedom from censorship was taken for granted. Park Chung-Hee’s regime ruthlessly went after anyone who spoke out against him, including theatre artists such as the late Pak Choyŏl, whose play O Chang-Gun’s Toenail (English translation available here), a satire of military culture and war, wasn’t performed until 1988, fourteen years after government officials blocked its intended premiere. But no one at the time imagined that the government would directly target an artist. Some of these groups picketed Birds for insulting Korea’s “national heroes,” while the conservative media denounced the Left’s predominance in the arts. Both President Parks had fanatic supporters-especially the father, who ruled South Korea as a military dictator for eighteen years from 1961 to 1979. Park had staged an adaptation of Aristophanes’ Birds in 2013 that caused a stir over several lines that poked fun at former President Park Chung-Hee and his daughter, who had won the presidential election earlier that year. Park Geun-Hyung, a respected, award-winning playwright and director, was denied funding by Arts Council Korea at the last minute, and a production he was scheduled to direct for the National Gugak Center was abruptly canceled around the same time. The first signs of widespread government censorship appeared in 2015. Photo: Black Tent Facebook Page (used with permission) “The Drawer Boy” and Another Way of Telling History 2nd September 2022.More Morisseau: “Skeleton Crew” by Dominique Morisseau 4th September 2022.“When God Kicks You In The Womb,” The Artist is Born 5th September 2022.“Murat IV” Opera to tell Ottoman Sultan’s Story in Istanbul 30th July 2022.Emerging Playwright Embarks on Gershwin Era Musical 23rd August 2022.
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