▲ Provided by Kim Youngkon

Korea University (KU) is a private school with currently 3,000 part-time instructors. Since 2011, there has been a confilct on meeting the rights or part -time instructors. Even though the part- time instructors union has attempted to diminish the disparity by trying to make appropriate negotiations with the school, the distance still remains stagnant.

For the past 700 days, the union has demanded many claims to fulfill their rights, such as demanding a raise in their pay to the amount that the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MEST) has proposed to be appropriate for part-time instructors. However, the president of the union, Kim Youngkon (’68, Economics) states, “The school did not effectuate these demands and has been denying the existence of this union by refusing to turn up at the negotiation table.”

While the status quo remains static, the recent case of Kim seems to have exacerbated the situation. Apparently, Kim, who was a part-time instructor at KU, Sejong Campus, had not received any courses to teach for the spring semester of 2013 for no reasonable explanations. When asked to clarify for such results, the school said that Kim lacked the qualifications; he did not have enough educational degrees. Contrary to this standard, however, it turned out that many lecturers who were assigned courses to teach had the same level of degrees as Kim. As soon as this fact was disclosed, the school gave another reason that it is within the rights of the president of KU to have the freedom to make these choices. The third reason the school gave was that the decisions were all a matter of the school’s business policy.

Kim feels that there is no legitimacy in the school’s decision for doing so and claimed that if the school did not revoke its decision, he would report to the civil court if necessary. Out of discontent, some students also sent a petition to the school, of which they still have not seen a reply.