More than 100 people put on the former Park Geun-hye administration’s blacklist of antigovernment artists and cultural figures were confirmed to have faced discriminatory measures for speaking out against the handling of the Sewol ferry disaster.

A fact-finding committee under the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism inspected one-thousand-302 artists put on the list for participating in statements against the former Park government over the sinking of the Sewol Ferry and found 116 of them had their artworks censored or excluded from state assistance programs for artists.

The committee also found that former presidential chief of staff Kim Ki-choon and other aides to the impeached ex-president strengthened persecution against the artists after public sentiment toward the government worsened over its mishandling of the deadly sinking of the ferry in April 2014.