Lyou's ambitions go beyond ivory tower

Lyou Chul-gyun, center, better known by his penname Yi In-hwa, was arrested by the police on Jan. 1. He is one of several faculty members at Ewha Womans University who were systematically involved in the plot to help Chung Yoo-ra, the daughter of the scandal-ridden Choi Soojn-sil, maintain her student status by granting academic favors. / Yonhap

By Kang Hyun-kyung

Lyou Chul-gyun, better known by his penname Yi In-hwa, has become a newsmaker again, 24 years after he rose to literary stardom for his 1993 fiction “Eternal Empire” which sold over 1 million copies.

The then-27-year-old writer fascinated his readers with the well-investigated historical fiction about the murder of Joseon King Jeongjo (1752-1800), a conspiracy theory that had been passed down for centuries through the descendents of the Noron faction, one of the two dominant political factions of the Joseon era.

Owing to his early success, he was able to become a full-time faculty member at Ewha Womans University when he was 29 years old, even before completing his doctoral degree at Seoul National University’s Department of Korean Studies.

But the reason for Lyou’s recent reemergence into the public eye is something disgraceful. He is under fire for coercing his teaching assistant to take the final exam of his “Understanding Storytelling in Movies” course on behalf of Chung Yoo-ra, the daughter of the trouble-hit Choi Soon-sil. Chung never showed up for his class all semester and didn’t even take the final exam. But she earned a passing grade to maintain her status as a student, stirring suspicions of academic fraud.

Lyou, 51, reportedly threatened his reluctant assistant into helping, saying she would face the consequences if she rejected his call because she would be blacklisted and as a result would never be able to find a job in a university or research institution even after successfully defending her dissertation. He was arrested earlier this week.

Lyou is one of several faculty members at Ewha Womans University who were systematically involved in the plot to help Chung maintain her student status by granting academic favors, despite her substandard academic performance.

The writer-turned-professor’s brazen act has caused those who are familiar with his past accomplishments to wonder about his motives — what caused such an established writer and professor to entangle himself in the academic fraud scandal?

Political analyst Choi Jin said Lyou’s alleged desire for honor seems to be the key driving force behind his actions.

“Considering he is the author of the bestseller book and a renowned professor, I think money maybe was not the main issue for him,” Choi said. “I think he might have sought influence outside the Ivory Tower in return for what he did for the daughter of President Park’s close friend. Like other professors, he seemed to have been interested in a plum job in the public sector, such as a cabinet minister or presidential secretary in the Park government.”

Mentioning his own prior experience as a presidential office staffer handling two presidential committees in the early and mid-2000s, Choi said there were many “ambitious” academics who were interested in high-ranking government jobs.

He said they prefer government jobs over elective posts such as lawmakers because they are risk-averse. Being a lawmaker requires them to pass a high-risk high-return game. There are possibilities for them to be eliminated in parties’ internal processes to select candidates to run in National Assembly elections. Risks still lurk among those who survive the internal test because they won’t be elected if they fail to win the election.

“I think Professor Lyou is one of the aspiring cabinet ministers or presidential secretaries and that’s why he risked his career to provide favors for Chung,” Choi said. “People’s desire for power knows no limit.”

The Park government had many professors-turned-cabinet ministers. The former heads of the Ministry of Unification, the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, and the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism were professors.

Those who are familiar with student-professor relations say Lyou seems to be one of the self-serving, unethical academics who took advantage of hierarchical relationships.

Graduate school students choose their academic advisers based on their academic interest because many of them seek to develop their interest in their dissertation, so they try to find specialists in their area of interest who can give proper advice for their papers. Their professors naturally become principal advisers for their dissertations and the professors’ influence in determining the approval or disapproval of their students’ dissertation is critical. The hierarchical culture between students and their academic advisers is naturally formed as students try not to hurt their relations with their advisers.

Asking for anonymity for fear of a possible backlash from colleagues, a national university professor said such a hierarchical relationship gives leeway to some unethical professors to get what they want.

“I don’t think Prof. Lyou is the only academic who used it. I assume there are still some others who are like him,” he said.

The professor said such abusive student-professor relations are the academic version of unethical practices that are common in the private and public sectors as well. “I am saying the universities are no different from other organizations when it comes to abusive senior-junior relations,” he said.

Those who are familiar with Lyou’s reputation as a writer say they were not surprised with what he did.

Some claim Lyou is notorious for plagiarism.

The first plagiarism allegation against Lyou came in 1992 when his award-winning book, “Who is it that Can Tell Me Who I Am,” was published.

In a contributing piece to the Spring Edition of the monthly literary magazine Hangil, critic Lee Sung-wook claimed that Lyou plagiarized several stories written by national and international writers, including Gong Ji-young.

Lee compared a paragraph he excerpted from Gong’s fiction, “No Other Wanderers Are More Fascinating than He,” a book about a labor activist fighting against abusive labor practices during the 1980s, with a related part of Lyou’s work. The two paragraphs were almost identical in terms of expressions and ideas.

Lee alleged that Lyou must be insane as he had used her and other writers’ work extensively without mentioning them.

Lyou denied the allegation and said he used a new literary technique, which he said was post-modern style, and the plagiarism allegation was a reflection of their ignorance of such a trendy literary method.

His plagiarism allegation was rekindled in 2015 as another critic Nam Jin-woo cited Lyou’s 1992 work as an example of plagiarism.