SBS chairman resigns over meddling scandal

The founding family of South Korea’s major broadcaster, SBS, offered to resign from top management posts Monday amid controversy about their alleged interference in news reports.

Yoon Se-young, who founded the network in 1990, said Monday he will quit as chairman of both SBS Media Group and SBS Media Holdings to “completely separate ownership and management.”

He said via in-house broadcasting that his son, Yoon Suk-mynn, will also resign from all the posts at the media company and its subsidiaries, except the non-executive directorship at SBS Media Holdings.

Its labor union and workers have argued that the chairman ordered the network not to report unfavorably about the two former conservative governments. They demanded he step down.

Last Wednesday, the labor union held an emergency meeting and demanded a complete separation between ownership and management and full autonomy in news coverage.

SBS President Park Jeong-hoon welcomed the move. In 2011, Yoon stepped down from the two posts, only to be reinstated last year.

Yonhap