[Editorial] Dongguk U. and Prof. Kang's Responsibilities

Dongguk University had decided to suspend sociology professor Kang Jeong Koo. They say the Private School Law requires that a person be removed from a teaching position when indicted in a criminal case. The school likely determined that Kang's comments that the Korean War was a "war of reunification" and that division of the Korean peninsula and war was forced on Korea by the United States damaged the school's reputation.

Even if you take the difficulties the school has had to face into consideration, Dongguk needs to rethink its decision in light of the universal mission that universities have. Scholarship thrives when it is given freedom and independence. It produces only ideology and subservient theory when forced and constrained. Universities are fortresses of freedom of scholarship and expression of thought. Has Dongguk been true to that universal obligation?

It did not censure Kang when he was arrested for his "spirit of Mangyongdae" statement in 2001. That made sense, because the teaching staff should be punished only when a person's behavior obstructs education, and it should not happen when a person's word and deeds relate to scholarship. The only thing that has changed since 2001 is that public opinion is less favorable, but should a university let rampant public opinion judge its professors? The reason the Hwang Woo Suk affair grew to the scale that it did was because something that should have been judged along academic lines was left to the court of popular opinion.

Dongguk should not be determining how severe a penalty it needs to issue Kang by what the prosecution says. It should base its judgment of his position on what the academic community says, after it has had a chance to examine whether his hypothesis is valid. Kang, in turn, should also take a more responsible approach. The "spirit of Mangyongdae" statement and the confused explanation about the "national war of liberation" that came later do not get rationalized by academic conviction. With freedom comes responsibility. Especially when it comes to academic freedom, there is a particular demand for strict self-imposed responsibility.

The Hankyoreh, 27 December 2005.

[Translations by Seoul Selection]