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Wednesday, August 08, 2007

There's Lying, and Then There's...
LYING.



'...Kim Ock-rang, head of Dongsoong Art Center, was found to have lied about her academic endeavors.

Kim's is the last in a recent series of diploma forgery cases involving prominent figures in various fields: Art curator Shin Jeong-ah who was dismissed from Dongguk University; English instructor Lee Ji-young who quit her radio program; and renowned architect Lee Chang-ha who also quit teaching at a college.

Kim, 62, [has been] a long-time supporter [of] the nation's theater ... [ever] since she headed a troupe, ``Nangnang,'' in 1984. She is now head of Dongsoong Art Center and Hypertheque Nada, [a center for theater as well as] art films [...] and director general of Ockrang Cultural Foundation.

She has also been giving lectures at Dankook University for the art management department since September 2002... [She] recently resigned from the post for ``personal reasons''...



A university official said Wednesday that the school decided to act on suspicions that the college where Kim had obtained [her] bachelor's degree was, in fact, an unauthorized school that does not offer credible diplomas. He said Kim is also suspected of lying about her middle and high school papers, as well as her college accreditations.

When hired at the university, she told the school that she had graduated from Kyunggi Girls' Middle and High Schools and Pacific Western University in the U.S. and obtained a master's degree at Sungkyunkwan University. But the high school confirmed Kim was not on the list of its graduates. She also said she attended at Ewha Womans University, but that institution likewise reported she had not graduated [from] there.

Pacific Western University is [...] a ``diploma mill,'' and is not authorized by the U.S. educational authority. Yet, the institution continues to dish out diplomas to students.

Kim entered Sungkyunkwan University's graduate school in 1997 with a bachelor's degree from Pacific Western University and obtained her master's degree. In 2004, she completed her doctorate in performing arts.

``When we hired Kim in 2002, she had a master's degree from Sungkyunkwan. We focused on the degree and failed to thoroughly inspect her other school academic records,'' the Dankook official said.

Lee Hye-kyung, director of Women's Film Festival in Seoul, said, ``The morality of her cheating on her academic career deserves criticism. But she has contributed to the cultural industry for long including helping in the depressed theater market, not concentrating on profits. I'm sorry for the society which makes people without decent diplomas feel alienated and bluff their way into jobs.'''


--korea times--