By Bae Ji-sook
Staff Reporter
Hagwons, or private educational institutes, will get their businesses suspended if their teachers are registered with fake diplomas.
Seoul Metropolitan Educational Office announced Wednesday that stricter regulations on academic career fabrication will be imposed on hagwon teachers. Gangnam district office, a regional affiliate of the office, has already probed instructor's academic careers.
The teachers with forged diplomas will be prosecuted and their workplaces will have to suspend business for at least seven days, the office said.
It said that employing instructors with fake diplomas would create a bad educational environment, deceptive advertising and poor management, enough to be punished with suspension.
It has been continually receiving information concerning instructors fabricating academic careers, but due to lack of personnel, proper measures for action have been stunted, an office spokesman said. He added that the names of hagwons with deceptive instructors will be posted online.
The probe followed rumors in the market that some instructors have been known to fake their academic careers. Such schools as Seoul National University (SNU), Yonsei University or Korea University graduates, ranking highest in the country have been known to have been victims.
Also, some information indicated that hagwons do not register with the government the real career of their teachers because the university brands appeal to parents choosing their children's teachers.
After the notorious scandal involving Shin Jeong-ah, a dismissed professor of Dongguk University who fabricated her career as Yale University and University of Kansas graduate, suspicion on instructors and their diplomas is piling up.
Especially, many working in the Gangnam area, one of the most well-off areas in the country, were said to have fake diplomas and being paid salaries. ``There, everyone is a SNU graduate,'' Chung, 26 year-old man who works as a part time private tutor, said.
The offices' probe has already generated results. Some teachers are said to have resigned and there are allegations that online star instructors have faked their diplomas, too.
However, hagwons complained that there is no certain way they can confirm every instructor's resume. ``If we ask universities for confirmation of graduation, they reject it,'' Chung Sun-ki of the online tutoring company Vitaedu said. Therefore, the best things he can do is to make instructors ask the universities to send verification documentation to the company, he added.
Some hagwon officials said that they too are victims of their employee's fraud and suspension on them is too harsh.
bjs@koreatimes.co.kr