The Supreme Court nullified Monday the graduate degrees of several South Koreans who were found to have submitted illegitimate undergraduate diplomas in order to be accepted to local graduate schools.
The highest court reversed a lower court ruling which acknowledged the master's degrees on the grounds that the students involved might suffer great losses because they paid full tuition for the master's courses.
Four South Korean students, who provided the documents saying they graduated from a Seoul branch of a Nigerian university in August 1999, received master's degrees in politics from a Seoul university in August 2001.
Police, however, found in January 1999 that the branch was not an accredited school.
The Nigerian university declared the degrees invalid in November 2001, prompting the South Korean university to cancel the master's degrees in question.