Ministry urged to disclose alleged law school admission frauds

By Lee Kyung-min

A group of lawyers has asked the Ministry of Education to disclose the names of former and incumbent high-profile legal professionals whose children are suspected of having entered law schools unfairly by highlighting their family background during the admissions process.

A total of 113 lawyers including Rha Seung-chul, former chairman of the Seoul Bar Association, said Monday that they had made an official request for information disclosure, adding they will file a lawsuit if the ministry rejects it.

The request comes amid growing suspicions that children of former and incumbent high-ranking prosecutors and judges were admitted to law schools, taking advantage of their parents’ ties with professors. The ministry has been investigating alleged irregularities in admissions at law schools for some time.

“If the allegations turn out to be true, it is a serious violation of the principle that guarantees fairness in selecting applicants for the law schools,” Rha said.

He added that it is rumored that hundreds of students entered law schools after highlighting their parents’ careers in their self-introduction essays, one of the key admission requirements.

“In one suspected case, an applicant spent the whole section of the self-introduction essay writing about his father, who is a former Supreme Court justice,” Rha added.

The ministry began an investigation into admissions fraud at the nation’s 25 law schools at the end of last year, the first probe in seven years after the nation adopted the law school system.

In their self-introduction essays, most law schools require the applicants to write about their personal strengths and weaknesses and lay out a study plan should they be admitted. Some of the schools also require the applicants to write about how they have grown, leaving room for them to disclose their parents’ jobs.

“Highlighting their family background does not directly mean a fraudulent admission takes place, but we are looking into whether there was any influence peddling or other problems in fairness,” a ministry official said.

Critics point out that suspicions of admissions fraud continue because the applicants’ evaluation scores on self-introduction essays and interviews are not disclosed. “These are decisive determining factors and that’s why the public complains that schools charging some 10 million won ($8,800) in annual tuition only benefit those from wealthy and powerful families,” Rha said.

Meanwhile, a police investigation is ongoing into the Kyungpook National University Law School over alleged influence-peddling and corruption surrounding its admissions process in 2013.

The probe is based on allegations depicted in a book “Law School for Law School Professors” written by a professor at the school, Shin Pyung, who wrote that one of his fellow professors visited a number of other professors’ offices and asked them to admit the son of his friend, a prosecutor-turned-lawyer, at the end of 2013.