Part-Time Lecturers Get Raw Deal

45 –year-old Seo was one of 58,000 “hourly lecturers” or part-time employees responsible for 55% of all the lectures conducted in universities across South Korea. (Another source puts the total number of these part-time lecturers at 85,000.) As his status was simply a “miscellaneous daily worker”, he could only expect to be paid between 30,000 and 40,000 won per hour with no fringe benefits like insurance. His monthly income was no more than 1.4 million won.

Although he had worked for 10 years in the same university, he still couldn’t get a full-time position. He had worked his way up the academic ladder to get his doctorate only to find himself acting as a part-time lecturer and ghostwriter. Seo said: “I wrote about 25 papers with this professor, one doctoral dissertation for the professor’s student, one Korea Research Foundation paper, four master’s theses, and four Korea Research Foundation presentation papers….. For all of the roughly 54 papers we wrote together, I wrote the papers and this professor just put his name on them.”

He also revealed, “I was asked to pay 60 million won by a university in South Jeolla two years ago and 100 million won by a university in Gyeonggi two months ago if I wanted to become a full-time professor.” Over eight years, he applied for a professorship and was rejected 20 times. When the years of frustration turned into despair, he wrote a five-page suicide note  last Tuesday to his wife, who worked more than 10 hours a day at restaurant to help support their two children.

According to The Korea Times, Kim Dong-ay, 61, a former full-time lecturer at a Seoul university and an executive of a temporary educators' union said, ``More than 70,000 part-time lecturers nationwide are being exploited without official labor contracts. Most of them earn less then 10 million won ($10,000) a year.'' They teach 40 % of classes at universities. Since their status was downgraded 34 years ago under the Park Chung-hee regime, they have been unable to enjoy basic benefits such as pensions and medical insurance.'' Since 2000, at least SIX part-time lecturers have killed themselves, driven to despair by the injustices and corruption in the education system.

Although the Supreme Court ruled in April 2007 that part-time lecturers must be accorded the same status as full-time professors, there has been little change as no-one dares to report instances of discrimination as the threat of summary dismissals is a real concern. To make matters worse, the Irregular Worker Protection Law, enacted in July 2007 stipulated that a "part-time lecturer is not part of the list of jobs that should be switched to permanent positions after two years of employment because they are regarded as a special group."  Elsewhere it was reported that Education Ministry statistics showed that  more than 1,000 part-time lecturers at 112 universities nationwide were dismissed in the autumn of 2009,  seemingly as a result of the Irregular Worker Law that requires employers to move irregular workers into regular positions after two years.

What I've culled from articles on the Net and summarised above is nothing new to many though it's something that I've only become aware of more recently. Perhaps it also explains in part why Seoul National University, the top tertiary institution in the country was only ranked  51st in the world by the Times Higher Education -QS World Universities Rankings for 2007. I can only hope that the situation will improve sooner than later, for part-time lecturers in Korea, for their sakes as well as for the sake of the students and the whole country.

Sources:

http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2921114
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2010/05/117_66639.html
http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/422981.html
http://english.donga.com/srv/service.php3?biid=2010052805728
http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2921146
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2008/03/113_21620.html
http://www.amrc.org.hk/node/1256/print
http://globalvoicesonline.org/2008/03/15/korea-part-time-lecturers-and-suicide/
http://stip.or.kr/bbs/board.php?bo_table=Solidarity&wr_id=10
http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_opinion/284754.html
http://www.academicleadership.org/emprical_research/606.shtml
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2010/05/113_65182.html