University presidents or trustees are increasingly expected to go around getting their schools more funding to be considered competent. Even when securing outside finds for academic research, however, the source and character of the funds being given must be made perfectly clear. If strict procedures are not followed the academy risks becoming a den of profiteers instead of a hall of scholarship
In December 1995 Yonsei University received W7.5 billion from the Japanese Nippon Foundation and with that money established something called the "Korea Japan Cooperative Research Fund." When controversy broke out the name was changed to the "Asia Research Fund" in June 1996. The Nippon Foundation's predecessor was the Nippon Maritime Promotion Association, created with massive earnings from motorboat competition by Ryoichi Sasakawa, who had earlier spent three years in prison as a Class A war criminal for his activities during World War II. Sasakawa once held a meeting with Italia's fascist leader Benito Mussolini, and in 1978 when it was announced the Japanese government was giving him a medal, other medal recipients refused to receive theirs. He was that controversial, even in Japan.
The Asia Research Fund excuse is that with Sasakawa dead, linking the Nippon Foundation to the war criminal is another form of finding guilt-by-association (yeonjwaje) and that officially the research fund has nothing to do with Yonsei, but that does not make sense. Key officials at Yonsei knew from the start that there were problems with the source of the money and, entirely on paper, set the fund in motion as an entity independent of the university. Even more absurd is the fact that Yonsei failed to correct the situation despite the fact there have been questions raised over the years. If it has any consideration for the feelings of the elderly women who suffered after being taken away by Imperial Japan to be "military comfort women" and how most of them have refused financial consolation from the Japanese government-funded Asian Women's Fund then Yonsei will apologize to the country and dissolve the Asia Research Fund immediately.
The Hankyoreh, 2 June 2005.
[Translations by Seoul Selection (PMS)]
[Editorial] Yonsei University's Outrageous Excuses |
