By Kang Shin-who
Staff Reporter

A foreign tenure professor at the state-run Seoul National University quit the school during the semester without giving prior notice and is refusing to return to the job. Andrea Pearson, 45, American professor of the department of archeology and art history at Seoul National University (SNU), abruptly left Korea late September. Majoring in northern Renaissance art, with research interests in gender and sexuality, Pearson came to SNU a month ago for the position of tenured professor.

Her fellow professors, school staff and students remain perplexed. ``We have no idea right now how to deal with this situation. We have been unable to contact her yet,’’ SNU spokesman Chung Min-ho told The Korea Times.

Yi Seon-bok, dean of the department also said he had nothing to comment on. The professor, who stayed alone in the school’s faculty dormitory, apparently emailed her assistant professor that she had difficulty in adapting to life here and was unhappy with SNU over working conditions.

She was quoted right after being hired in SNU newspaper as saying ``I am delighted with the hard work students put into their studies, and was particularly impressed that even the students who were only auditing came to class fully prepared and completed all of their assignments.’’

Some SNU professors point out the university has been negligent in a screening system to recruit quality professors and only focused on attracting as many foreign professors as possible. Currently, SNU has some 80 foreign professors and among them, 20 faculty members have permanent professorships.

kswho@koreatimes.co.kr