Ewha Womans University has incurred severe reputational damage following the allegations of irregularities regarding the admission and grades of one of its students, Chung Yoo-ra, the daughter of Choi Soon-sil, a woman at the center of one of the biggest corruption scandals of the Park Geun-hye administration.
Choi, known to be a close confidante of the President, is also the daughter of Park’s mentor Choi Tae-min and ex-wife of the President’s former aide Chung Yun-hoe. The public has been disgusted by allegations that such a person with no specific credentials was able to wield influence in the establishment of two non-profit cultural organizations, the Mir and K-Sports foundations. Now the widening suspicion of irregularities regarding Choi Soon-sil’s daughter, who entered the Department of Kinesiology and Sports Studies of the nation’s top women’s university in March 2015, is creating huge ripples not just at Ewha, but also throughout society.
The pride of the students and faculty has been gravely hurt due to the shameful allegations regarding Ewha’s admission process and management of grades. Some angry Ewha students are now calling their school “Soon-sil University.”
The most important principle of university admission is fairness and transparency. No applicant should be granted special treatment because of family connections or any other reasons. In Korea where admission is extremely selective at schools like Ewha, any sort of admission fraud, particularly by those who have money and power, is unacceptable in the eyes of the public. Therefore, public indignation toward the Choi family, and by extension the President, will only grow stronger.
The allegations involving Choi’s daughter is another huge blow for university President Choi Kyung-hee, who is already facing calls to step down due to what her critics call a unilateral push for establishing a night school for working women.
The embattled university president’s closed-door meeting with students and faculty Monday did little to settle the growing suspicions about how Chung, who was a member of the national dressage team, was admitted and how she has been able to get good grades without proper execution of assignments and regular attendance. They suspect that she was granted exceptional favors by the school authorities before and after admission due to her mother’s influence in the Park administration. For the first time in the university’s 130-year history, the faculty has decided to hold a protest calling for the removal of the school president.
The university president must clearly explain the allegations regarding Chung to save the reputation of the school. She should also swiftly make a decision about the growing calls for her resignation from students and faculty to normalize campus, which has been occupied by protesters for too long, and prevent further disorder on campus.
The education ministry should conduct a thorough investigation into the allegations and duly penalize Ewha if they are substantiated.