2 athletes' contrasting school life

Kim Yu-na’s student life in spotlight amid scandal

By Kim Se-jeong

Kim Yu-na

The former national figure skater, Kim Yu-na, 26, impressed many with her professionalism in the sport. On Wednesday, her name was back on social media and the internet, with people highly praising her efforts for academic achievement.

It was prompted by Chung Yoo-ra, 19, the daughter of President Park Geun-hye’s close confidante Choi Soon-sil, who is at the center of a fast-developing scandal.

The allegation is that Choi influenced Ewha Womans University to get her unqualified daughter, who was a dressage competitor, to be accepted into the Department of Kinesiology and Sports Studies.

Chung faced criticism from fellow athletes over the suspicious admission. At that time she wrote on her Facebook: “Blame your parents if you don’t have competence instead of talking about my parents. Money is competence. If you don’t like this, you’d better choose other sports.”

She faced having poor grades as she trained overseas a lot which kept her from attending classes. Her mother then allegedly pressured professors to give her daughter decent grades, and it is alleged that Chung received good grades even though her assignments contained plagiarism and were submitted after deadlines.

The allegations drew an immediate backlash from other Ewha students. “How is it possible that a student who didn’t show up for a single class gets a B while others who worked throughout the night to meet deadlines get lower grades?” a student said in a note posted on the campus website.

There is a stark contrast in the school lives of Chung and Kim, a world-champion figure skater, who studied at Korea University.

According to news reports, interviews and school records, she was a hard-working student.

Kim received two Fs in her first semester, and her professors refused to give her a second chance or any special treatment. When a new semester began, Kim emailed her professors seeking to be excused when she had to skip classes for overseas training, promising to do extra work to make up for it. And she did, submitting assignments without plagiarism every time she came back to Korea.

As a physical education major, she also had to complete a four-week teacher training course.

Online messages were overwhelmingly supportive of Kim.

“Chung is incompatible with Yu-na,” one wrote. “Chung earned grades through connections, but Yu-na did it by working hard. Nothing more can be said.”

“Kim Yu-na must be a very wise woman. She deserves her title,” another wrote.

Another blogger said, “Kim was Korea’s treasure who raised the nation’s status in sports. She deserved special treatment and favors at school, but she did not take advantage of this. Chung, who doesn’t deserve it, took the special treatment for granted.”