A woman holds a placard on the campus of a university in Seoul, Thursday, accusing a female professor of the school of having threatened her to abort her baby, the professor’s grandchild. / Captured from a Twitter account

By Kim Tae-jong

A woman, carrying her new-born baby, staged a solo rally holding a placard on the campus of a private university in Seoul Thursday, drawing the attention of passing students.

She was protesting against one of the professors at the university, who is her baby’s grandmother, accusing the professor of having tried to force her to abort the baby. She also claimed the professor regularly verbally abused her.

Carrying her new-born baby in her arms, the 28-year-old stood holding a sign, reading “I became pregnant following my engagement. But my fiance’s mother broke us up when I was six months into the pregnancy. She then tried to force me to have an abortion right up until my eighth month.”

On the placard, she listed her complaints, using the real name of the professor and her department.

The professor is known to have consulted on issues related to the welfare of women and adolescents.

The woman fiercely denounced the baby’s grandmother, saying she has led a miserable life for over a year because of the professor. “The hypocritical and inhumane behavior of the professor, whose job is to consult single moms and families, has put me in pain for over a year.”

According to her, she met the baby’s father three years ago. Initially, she wasn’t sure whether she could maintain the relationship with him because of his “elite” family background and expected objections from his parents.

But they fell in love and decided to move into the girl’s house together in Busan to avoid his parents and lived there for seven months.

In late 2009, they went to the U.S. together to study, but months later they found out she was pregnant. They came back to Korea for a wedding and told the man’s parents about the pregnancy.

The man’s mother forced him to break up with her and then tried to make her have an abortion. He then suddenly went back to the U.S. leaving her here alone.

She gave birth and became a single mother. She tried talk to the baby’s father and grandmother but they have kept avoiding her or treated her badly.

The professor refuted the accusation saying she had never tried to force the young woman to have an abortion although she admitted she repeatedly asked her son to break up with her.

“I’ve never asked her to have an abortion. I heard that they had discussed it though,” the professor said in an interview with Nocut News. “I offered to raise the baby, but the mother rejected it saying I would put her up for adoption.”

She also said she will file a defamation suit against the single mother.

But she was not available for a further interview for this article.

When the protest was made public, online message boards and social networking sites such as Twitter were flooded with comments criticizing the professor.

“I saw the woman holding a placard on campus. She looked so sad. It’s a disgrace that the professor works at my school,” a student said on a message board.