Police will check academic records of 2,800 teachers

Two years ago, a 23-year-old woman applied for a job as a math instructor at a private institute in Gangnam District, southern Seoul.
She got the job, but had to do one thing first: get a fake certificate saying she’d graduated from the country’s most prestigious school, Seoul National University.
The institute was soon advertising its SNU connection. The woman, who declined to be named, had majored in economics at a woman’s college in Seoul.
“Many cram schools that I applied to demanded the same thing,” said the woman, now 25. “All of the English instructors at the institutions were introduced in the ad as English literature majors from prestigious universities and math instructors as math education majors from those schools.”
Following the recent revelations that art professor Shin Jeong-ah had falsified her academic records, the Songpa Police Precinct said yesterday it was verifying the authenticity of academic records of about 2,800 instructors at private institutes, or hagwon, in the Songpa district of southern Seoul.
Police said it will book those who are found to have faked their degrees.
According to an English instructor in Seongnae-dong, southeastern Seoul, who asked not to be named, there are many cases in which the directors of the institutes themselves cheat. The instructor, 41, said many teachers also get forged records online.
Fake diplomas are easy to get on the Internet. A quick search showed that a forged certificate costs $50 (45,700 won); a grade certificate costs another $50. For $10 more, a person can be an honors graduate, designated magna cum laude or summa cum laude, according to the Web sites.
The Customs Office at Incheon International Airport said yesterday it is confiscating more and more smuggled fake graduation and grade certificates from prestigious local universities. The figure was 20 in 2004, but rose to 80 last year, the airport said.
Through the first half of this year, another 70 have been confiscated.
“In the past, the forged documents we spotted were mostly passports, residential registration cards and driver’s licenses,” said a customs official of the airport, on condition of anonymity. “But since last year, half of them have been graduation and grade certificates.”
According to customs, most of the documents are made in China and Thailand and they are carried in hidden within other documents, books or baggage.

By Chun In-sung JoongAng Ilbo/ Moon Gwang-lip Staff Writer [joe@joongang.co.kr]