Alleged Manipulation of TV Chosun Reauthorization Review; Former KCC Chairman Han Sang-hyeok Acquitted

[Financial News] Former Korea Communications Commission chairman Han Sang-hyeok, who was indicted on charges of improperly interfering in the reauthorization review of general programming channel TV Chosun, was found not guilty in the first trial. KCC officials and the review committee chair who were tried alongside him were also all found not guilty.
According to legal sources on the 12th, the Seoul Northern District Court’s Criminal Division 13, presided over by Judge Sanghoon Na, found the former chairman not guilty that day on charges including obstruction of government officials in the performance of their duties by deceptive means.
Yang, then director-general of the KCC’s Broadcasting Policy Bureau, Cha, then head of its Broadcasting Support Policy Division, and Yoon Seok-nyeon, who chaired the TV Chosun reauthorization review committee, were also found not guilty on the same charges. Yoon was accused, among other things, of deliberately lowering the evaluation scores after receiving the results of the score tally.
Han was indicted on charges that, during TV Chosun’s 2020 reauthorization review, he selected reviewers critical of the broadcaster and, despite knowing of signs that evaluation scores had been manipulated, turned a blind eye and caused the KCC to approve reauthorization subject to conditions. He was also charged with having a proposal prepared to shorten the reauthorization period from the existing four years to three and having a press release drafted stating that the KCC had not interfered in the reviewers’ evaluations.
However, the court found insufficient evidence to support the prosecution’s claim that Han had sought to appoint reviewers critical of general programming channels. It also ruled that the KCC’s basic and detailed plans, which served as the basis for selecting reviewers, were merely internal work guidelines and that the actual selection process was not necessarily required to follow those procedures.
The court also rejected the charge that the review results had been shared in advance. It found that Yang had told Committee Chair Yoon that all broadcasters had scored more than 650 points in total and that none had failed any of the key review items, and that this information constituted an official secret. However, given the usual review practices and the fact that committee chairs who did not take part directly in reviews would still have a general understanding of the results as the final review date approached, the court said it was difficult to conclude that this amounted to disclosure of a secret.
The court also ruled differently from the indictment on when the preparation and revision of evaluation sheets were prohibited. It found that the review committee’s work was not complete until it approved the final review opinion on the last day, and therefore that preparing, submitting or revising evaluation sheets before then could not be considered prohibited.
The court also rejected the claim that Han had expressed dissatisfaction after being briefed on the review results. There was testimony that, during a phone call with Yang at the time, Han had said things such as “This is driving me crazy,” “This is going to get noisy,” and “I’m going to get some flak.” But the court found the driver’s testimony supporting the claim insufficiently reliable. Investigators found that the driver had said he could not accurately remember a phone call from three years earlier and had not clearly heard the conversation at the time.
The court also concluded that it was difficult to establish collusion in the alleged score manipulation by the reviewers. It raised the possibility that two reviewers had changed scores along with the committee chair in order to make TV Chosun fail on key review items. However, it explained that, without proof of prior collusion between Yang and Committee Chair Yoon, Yoon’s telling the reviewers that TV Chosun had received a high score for fairness was not enough to establish an agreement to manipulate scores.
The charge of preparing a false press release also formed part of the basis for the not-guilty verdict. The court found that the explanatory material at issue was a draft prepared for internal reference and did not constitute an official document. It therefore ruled that the offense of preparing a false official document had not been established. The court also said it was difficult to conclude that there had been improper outside interference regarding whether the material’s contents were actually false.
The court also found it difficult to deem unlawful the decision to shorten the reauthorization period from four years to three. The reason was that the KCC had discretion to set the period. As supporting precedent, it cited the KCC’s decision to grant MBN a three-year, rather than five-year, reauthorization period during its review in November 2023.
This is the first court ruling, issued about three years and six months after the Prosecution Office indicted the former chairman and others in May 2023. At the final hearing held on September 1, the Prosecution Office had asked the court to sentence Han to three years in prison.
As he left the courthouse shortly after the verdict, Han said, “This was a series of actions carried out to replace public broadcasters with people favored by the government,” adding, “The distortion and manipulation of investigations for political purposes must never happen again in our society.”
[email protected] Seo Ji-yoon Reporter