By Oh Young-jin
Assistant Managing Editor
Seoul National University (SNU) is Korea's top school that has served as breeding ground for the nation's leaders for more than a half century at the peak of its industrialization.
Now at the age of globalization, it has a new mission ― preparing young talented students to work in sync with global standards. The importance of this mission can't be overstated, considering Korea stands on the threshold of joining the ranks of advanced countries.
In this sense, the latest news about frustrations foreign students are feeling while studying at SNU is nothing less than disturbing because those anecdotal cases, reported on the front page of the Sept. 16 edition of this newspaper, illustrates how behind the school is in its taxpayer-financed mission of teaching tomorrow's leaders for the world as well as Korea.
The most stunning in the report is a lecturer's derogatory remarks against Chinese in the presence of Chinese students during a class. The lecturer was quoted by Yavuz Selim, the former president of international students' group in SNU, as saying, "It must be made in China," when he had to stop writing on whiteboard because of a faulty marker.
The lecturer is not only racially-biased but also plain stupid, thus, is not worthy of his job of teaching a potential group of future leaders at SNU. Above all, racial bias, more precisely, being open about it is the last thing one needs to work on world stage.
Then, the world is crazy about China for its explosive growth in economy and military power, with SNU's counterparts in Korea's competitor countries concentrating on teaching their students to know more about the Middle Kingdom. China has long replaced the United States as Korea's biggest trading partner.
Besides, what would those Chinese students at SNU tell their compatriots when they return home? To say the least, it would be a very poor PR job not just about SNU but for Korea.
The Korea Times asked an SNU professor to respond to this allegation in an informal setting but the professor condemned it but stopped short of reporting it to the school authorities.
I sincerely hope that the lecturer is not on a tenured track and an isolated case for the sake of the country's future.
In this sense, it is worrying to hear a tenured SNU professor take a "take-or-leave" approach about its Korean-only registration system. "They should learn Korean," the professor was quoted by my reporter as saying.
His remark, even if given a benefit of doubt, first goes against what the government stands for. A new guideline for foreign student admissions, announced by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, stipulates that foreign students are required to have a mid-level Korean proficiency or be English-capable at equivalent levels. SNU is a state-run university and should be among the first to follow the ministry's rules.
In practical terms, requiring foreign students to have a command of Korean at the level needed for school registration can be counterproductive. First, it will whittle down a potential field of foreign applicants who want to study in SNU. SNU has a total of 936 foreign students or about 3 percent of its total enrollments estimated at 27,000 in undergraduate and graduate courses.
I believe that it is important for SNU to increase foreign students' ratio, because their bigger presence can help Korean students to know more about the rest of the world and learn how to interact with people of other ethnicities, an experience that can be pivotal to those who takes racially-homogenous societies such as Korea for granted.
Then, the lack of compulsory courses offered in English is something that SNU should reconsider not just for the sake of a handful of foreign students. It is for its own benefit, too, because it would send a right message to its faculty as well as Korean students living in the global age in which English is not a tool of choice but of survival. Perhaps, it can help SNU students score higher in English proficiency tests, taking into consideration that the school is not proud of its students' poor scores.
Last but not least, I ask the school administration to set up a prayer room and offer religiously-correct food for Muslim students. If it can't do it right away, explain with a sense of sincerity why it can't or offer them a timetable. Islam may be seen as an exotic religion to many but, in this global age we are living, it has come closer to us than we realize. The power of Islam can't be missed for a variety of reasons ranging from its oil money to clash of civilization with Christianity.
I know that a big and tradition-bound SNU can't change overnight but it can delay its transformation at the risk of turning into a reconstructed set of fossilized skeletons of a dinosaur in a museum when private schools are competing to globalize themselves. If it doesn't see a sign, I am seeing it from its handling of foreign students.