Webtoon blows the whistle on the suffering of S. Korea’s “academic slaves”

[mlmello.livejournal.com]

An image from the webtoon “The Sad Face of Graduate Students.”
The text along the top reads, “Being treated like a slave by advising professor,” while writing a paper for the professor.

A professor launches a two-hour-long torrent of abuse against a teaching assistant who departed for a seminar without waiting for the late-arriving professor. The professor says, “What kind of TA lets the bus go before the professor comes? You’re sorry? If you’re sorry, get on your knees and beg.”

It’s a scene from the first episode in the webtoon “The Sad Face of Graduate Students.” But it isn‘t just a cartoon plot development - it’s an incident that actually happened at Korea University in 2010. The professor in question received a three-month suspension earlier this year for chronic verbal and physical abuse against students.

On June 17 a collection of “Sad Face” episodes was published in book form. The webtoon has already drawn major attention for its stark depiction of a university environment where professors treat their graduate students like slaves. The book features all eleven installments, which were serialized on portal sites between Nov. 2015 and early June of this year.

“If we keep just ignoring the problems of graduate students like we do now, we can never even dream of things like a Nobel Prize in this country,” writes the webtoon’s story writer, 25-year-old Yeom Dong-gyu, in the book’s introduction. Yeom is currently head of the academics bureau of the general graduate school student council at Korea University.

“Solving the problems of graduate student researchers is a matter with direct bearing on the future of South Korean academia and the development of scholarship,” Yeom adds.

“I want to do more than just express how graduate students are slaves to their professors. I wanted to explain why we as a society should be paying more attention to their situation,” said Yeom in the Korea University student council offices on June 24. A graduate of the university‘s Korean literature department, Yeom is currently pursuing a master’s degree. He’s also a critic who made his writing debut with a prize in criticism at the 2014 Daesan University Literary Awards.

All of the webtoon’s episodes show events that actually happened to graduate students.

“People have said, ‘You’re just sensationalizing things, you‘re exaggerating’, but there’s nothing exaggerated or twisted from the accounts we heard - they’ve just been adapted to avoid identifying anyone in particular,” Yeom said.

“In some cases, we trimmed out things that seemed too provocative, and we actually ended up toning it down from what really happened.”

The third installment, titled “Can I go on?” focuses on the issue of male professors sexually harassing female students. In it, a professor tells his student, “You‘re new here. I suppose there are a lot of things you don’t know. I can teach you a thing or two. If you weren‘t my student, I might try something. . . .”

In real life, the professor it was based on also asked the student if she wanted to “go to a motel for some instruction.”

“A lot of the wording for the sexual harassing remarks by professors is exactly as it happened. We heard the stories from students and said to each other, ’They really do hear this kind of stuff every day,‘” Yeom recalled.

Such victimization isn’t just a problem for a few unfortunates - it’s a widespread issue facing graduate students all over South Korea. A 2014 nationwide survey of the research environment for graduate students by the Presidential Committee on the Young Generation found 2,354 of respondents, or 45.5% of the total, reported experience with one or more forms of unjust treatment such as verbal, physical, or sexual abuse; discrimination; being forced to do private work; and copyright infringement. In essence, the webtoon is blowing the whistle on the horrors of a community that remain unknown to anyone who isn’t part of a graduate school.

A major focus is on abuses that border on criminal, including embezzlement of research funding by professors and ghostwriting of research papers. An example can be found in the second installment (“An Understanding Student”), which focuses on research theft: how a paper based on night-and-day experiments acquired “shared authorship” at a single word from an advisor. “Turn it in to [name omitted] as is,” the professor says in the strip.

In one case, a professor ordered a graduate student to list an upperclassman as co-writer for a paper the student had completed on their own. The student knew when they went into the doctoral program that they wouldn’t make money in the field, but believed it was an essential area for human lives.

“You think we’re students?” the upperclassman told the student. “Don’t get confused. We’re slaves. We aren’t popular and we don’t get much research money. We‘re the most servile slaves of all.”

During the webtoon’s serialization, the Korea University student council office became a reporting center for human rights abuses against graduate students all over the country. A “special edition” webtoon scheduled for online publication in the near future focuses on the story of three Sungkyunkwan University students sued by their school over fabrications in a research paper by their professor. The institution demanded 6 billion won (US$5.07 million) from all four - professor and students alike.

“The students sent an email about it. Even though our informants have student councils at their own schools, a lot of them contact us,” Yeom said.

Yeom and the Korea University student council are currently working on the season two serialization, with a target launch date in November.

“More and more people are requesting the kind of data that we used to be the only ones looking at - things like studies on the working environment for TAs or for graduate students. The webtoon has had a lot of impact.”

“I used to be skeptical about how much we could actually change, but now I have hope that we can really change something.”


By Jin Myung-seon, staff reporter

not sure if this is the type of content to be posted here, but it's an interesting read imo.

thehankyoreh

Comments

[ah0000.livejournal.com]

I'm at work so I'll have to read this later but shit the stuff before the cut :o

[adlyeith.livejournal.com]

holy crap

[broadcities.livejournal.com]

really interesting post, thanks op!

this sounds horrible. it's good that this is getting publicity but it probably won't be enough to punish those contributing to these problems...

i find it really interesting how webtoons sometimes serve as a platform to uncover social problems like this, is there an english translation floating around somewhere on the web of this webtoon (or other interesting ones, for that matter)?

[magicpineapple.livejournal.com]

I'd like to know if there's an English translation for this as well + like you said anything else really fascinating like this.
Maybe some kind soul will translate it, if it hasn't already been done yet?

[mercury-sound.livejournal.com]

Thanks a lot for posting this, OP!!! I think posts like this absolutely should have their place in this community.

The things described in the webtoon sound horrible, but it is great that it apparently has the kind of impact it does. I also think it's pretty brave of the writer to write about it in the first place, considering he's a graduate student himself!

[iheartdarkblue.livejournal.com]

This is appalling but at the same time not surprising. Academia has always been rampant with people abusing their seniority and positions of power.

[demonology81.livejournal.com]

I've never been to college/university so I don't know how it is but why do such things happen? :(

Why, people like those professors live like that? Just because you have power? Eurrgh. Stupid.

[soyunatetera.livejournal.com]

In term of the educational system in Korea I always read about issues and abuses causes in the primary and secundary schools mostly because of how harsh and demanding it is, but never knew about the situation in the universities, in fact I always thought thing went easier there I don't know why... sexual assault and copyright infringement is something that happens everywhere regretfully, but with this article it makes me think it's considered more normal in Korea? Hope this webtoone get some actual change done and not just the communicational impact

[nana-the-dwarf.livejournal.com]

Me too. The way I've heard (and read) a lot of Koreans talk about school life is mostly uni being a breath of fresh air and a time to actually enjoy themselves more after busting their asses trying to get in.

[nightmushroom.livejournal.com]

i'm not sure about those things, but i do know the grading system is based less on actual points/percentage and more on what grade the professor feels like giving students. they have a lot of power over deciding grades, and a lot of people say that's why it's easier to get a good GPA in korea than other countries. in my understanding, the top student could score 89% and get an A+ for the top grade. then the professor has a certain amount of A's B's C's etc to "give" out to the other students. maybe students with 85% get A's and it's up to the professor if he wants to give the student with an 82% an A or a B. i don't know EXACTLY how it works, but i've read it's like this at some Unis.

i could see how such a situation might lead to professors having even more power over students in general when the grading is so arbitrary. things like bribing professors with gifts/sucking up to them is considered a must if you want an A. it's not good enough to just study hard.

i know people in power are corrupt everywhere, but when they are given even more power by society and cultural practices, i can't imagine the outcome is very good. additional power like requiring students to drink with them and how much to drink etc just sounds like a bad mix of a situation...

[soyunatetera.livejournal.com]

Well if it works like you're describing it then it's no surprise that a shady environment is created.... and all this issues mixed with Korea's drinking culture is a bad combination and nothing good comes out of it

[jasmineakaiumi.livejournal.com]

yeah you're right. I got a 54% on my final exam for one class last semester here and thought I was failing but it turned out to be a B...?

[nightmushroom.livejournal.com]

no offense to you, because that was probably a relief but... how ridiculous lmao

[jasmineakaiumi.livejournal.com]

no offense taken - I went from freaking out about not being able to graduate to actually feeling pretty decent lmao it's a really weird system but when the class avg was 53% I guess the teacher has to curve it pretty hard

[ponpirot.livejournal.com]

I'm American. There were certain professors you knew not to cross as a student, but I've never been abused or felt as if I was being taken advantage of during my graduate studies. Even the papers we wrote "for" the advisor had our names on it as well.

The average Korean life seems like it's full of stress.

[novnariel.livejournal.com]

Having been through a graduate school I can tell you that unjust treatment, discrimination; being forced to do private work, and copyright infringement are not solely Korean problems. I saw same things happening to my friends. And it doesn't matter if your professor is male or female, the "stars" in their field from prestigious unis seem to be mord susceptible to power-tripping. PhD students are so low in the pecking order though, lower than undergrads, no-one cares much.

[tsuyoi-hikari.livejournal.com]

Koreans live such a stressful life. After busting their younger years studying non-stop and getting through all of these, there are no silver lining in the end either. When they entered the work environment, its going to be so stressful like what Misaeng portrayed. To think they have to work soooooo hard to lead that kind of uninspirational and stressful (not to mention alcohol and cigarettes dependency life) life is just sad...

[purekpopology.livejournal.com]

I thought this was interesting. Before I read this, if you'd asked me if I thought graduate students faced any abuse from their professors, I might have said "probably sometimes", but after reading this article I can see there's more ways the professor could abuse their power than I would have thought of. It sounds like it could be even worse in Korea? If that's the case it kind of makes sense because of how seriously their age/seniority ranking is taken.

I definitely articles like this belong in Omona. Most people are here for the kpop/kdramas, but I think it's important that we all learn something about their history/culture/society at the same time.

[phresine.livejournal.com]

"but I think it's important that we all learn something about their history/culture/society at the same time"

Agreed! Thanks for posting, OP.

[magicpineapple.livejournal.com]

I definitely articles like this belong in Omona. Most people are here for the kpop/kdramas, but I think it's important that we all learn something about their history/culture/society at the same time.

Most definitely agree, & thanks for posting, oh-pee!

[idlewilds3.livejournal.com]

Echoing others' sentiment, I appreciate this being posted even if reading it makes me depress as hell. I know we're usually here for the shiny K-entertainment stuffs but it always make me pause realizing how messed up a culture that I fangirl certain aspects over is so problematic. Obviously, every countries have their shitty shady issues but since I'm more exposed to K-entertainment, I also get more exposure to how their society function and I don't know, it just makes me sad for humanity in general.

[rawfudge.livejournal.com]

I worked in a lab in Korea that had a number of grad students and sadly a lot of this is true. I got off pretty easy since I was only there temporarily (and also a foreigner), but the grad students had it really rough. They would often have to stay until 10pm or go in on the weekends to do experiments and basically did all of the labor. The PI would include their names on the final paper but only if they were involved with the design of the experiment; running the tests for analysis and stuff (which took a while) didn't get them recognition. They would often drink a lot and complain about the professors too. They would just also think about how many more years they had before they could leave. Quite sad :/