SNU Officially Employs Two Foreigners as Professors

Seoul National University(SNU) officially hired two full-time professors of foreign nationality for the first time ever, following the government's recent revision of the law on employment of educational public servants. Unlike private universities, which can hire foreigners to full-time positions, public and national universities could only employ foreigners as visiting or part-time professors, but as a result of the changes, national and public universities throughout the country can hire foreigners as full-time official professors.
SNU announced that Canadian Moon Woo-il, who lectures and does research within the Geology Department of the Natural Science College, and U.S. citizen Yoon Do-young, a Chemistry professor, were hired as full professors on September 1.
However, official employment of the two scholars by SNU had been delayed because before the law was changed they would have had to renounce their citizenship in order to be full professors at the university.
Professor Moon, aged 58, who graduated from SNU in 1964 before going to Canada for post-graduate study, has taught university students as a part-time instructor at SNU since September last year. He returned to Korea in 1998 after having turned down a position from a Canadian university.
Joining him is Professor Yoon, aged 52, who graduated from chemical engeneering at SNU's College of Technolgy and then received his master's and doctoral degrees at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the U.S. He has taught as a visiting professor, not a full-time professor, at SNU from March this year, because he was of foreign nationality.
Professor Yoon worked as a senior researcher in the U.S. for IBM before coming to Seoul.
Seo Jang-soo:jsbee@joongang.co.kr