Bahk Eun-ji has been with The Korea Times since 2012, building a career across multiple desks. She began at the Business Desk, where she conducted in-depth interviews with key figures in Korea's corporate world. Later, she moved to the Politics & City Desk, focusing on education policy and social affairs. She later served as team leader of the digital content team, leading curation efforts on the newspaper’s homepage and reshaping print stories for social media audiences to enhance digital reach. Now back on the Politics Desk, she covers the National Assembly and the Ministry of National Defense, with a renewed focus on political developments.
Moon's trusted aide bombarded with criticism, pressed to resign
By Bahk Eun-ji
Students from three prestigious universities are seeking to hold candlelit protests on their campuses today, demanding the truth about the alleged preferential treatment in admissions received by justice minister nominee Cho Kuk's daughter.
An image is posted on SNULife, an online community of Seoul National University students, to inform people of a planned candlelit protest against one of the school's professors and justice minister nominee Cho Kuk over multiple allegations involving his daughter. / Captured from SNULife
By Bahk Eun-ji
The protest will be especially painful for Cho, one of President Moon Jae-in's trusted aides, and the Moon administration, which took power thanks to massive public candlelit protests against a huge corruption scandal involving former President Park Geun-hye.
Students at Seoul National University (SNU), the alma mater and former workplace of the minister nominee, created a Facebook page titled “Candlelit rally of SNU students to stop Prof. Cho,” Wednesday, and publicized the rally that will take place on the school's campus, today.
Students at Korea University, where Cho's daughter attended, also plan to hold their own rally on campus, today.
One student first suggested the rally on the school online community, Koreapas, but he said Wednesday evening that he would give up leading the protest due to pressure he was under as a law school student.
“As a law school student who has to take a state-run exam managed by the justice ministry, I'm feeling so much pressure and am even frightened to lead the rally to condemn the justice minister nominee. But I do hope the rally will be staged as planned and someone will take this job instead of me,” he wrote on Koreapas.
Later in the day, other students said they would take over, and finalized the protest plan.
Students of Pusan National University (PNU), where the junior Cho now attends the graduate school of medicine, are also considering holding a protest.
The moves follow growing speculation that the 28-year-old received preferential treatment in admission and receiving scholarships at Korea and Pusan National universities.
When she was a high school student, she was listed as a lead author in an academic paper published in a renowned medical journal although she only took part in a two-week internship at the Medical Science Research Institute of Dankook University's College of Medicine.
The academic paper may have helped her get enrolled in Korea University in 2010 through a non-scheduled admission.
She also received a total of 12 million won ($9,930) in scholarships for six straight semesters from 2016 to 2018 while attending the medical school at PNU, although she flunked twice.
The college admission is one of the most sensitive issues among young people and their parents. Critics allege Cho's daughter's case is reminiscent of a scandal involving the daughter of Choi Soon-sil, the longtime confidante of former President Park, who was at the center of the corruption allegations against the ex-head of state. Choi's daughter Chung Yu-ra received favorable treatment at schools thanks to her mother's influence, being admitted to Ewha Womans University, and receiving excellent grades despite not attending classes or taking exams.
Following the allegations, Dankook University decided to create a fact-finding committee to investigate the academic paper case. The committee will look into whether it was against research ethics to list Cho's daughter as the lead author of the paper, and if it was beyond the discretion of the professor in charge of the study at the time.
Some doctors' groups, including the Korean Medical Association, claimed the placing of Cho's daughter as lead writer was a serious violation of research ethics.
Korea University also said the school will investigate whether Cho's daughter's admission should be cancelled based on school regulations.
“Under the guidelines of the education ministry, we discard data and information of students' admissions every five years. As a result, we discarded the data for 2010 when Cho's daughter enrolled,” the school said in a statement.
“If grave fault is found in the documents submitted for admission, it can be cancelled according to school rules.”