"Is there another professor like this?"... Graduate students mobilized for child's admissions (CG) [Provided by Yonhap News TV]

A professor who mobilized his students to help his daughter gain admission to a graduate school of dentistry has had his three-and-a-half-year prison sentence confirmed by the Supreme Court.

According to legal sources on the 22nd, the first division of the Supreme Court (Justice Cheon Dae-yeop presiding) recently upheld the lower court's ruling against Lee (67), a former pharmacy professor at Sungkyunkwan University, who was charged with obstruction of business.

The prison sentence of 10 months, suspended for two years, was also upheld for Lee's daughter, who was indicted alongside him.

Lee was brought to trial on charges of getting his daughter admitted to the Seoul National University School of Dentistry in 2018 by using a research paper ghostwritten by his graduate students as her academic achievement.

In 2016, Lee ordered his graduate students to conduct animal experiments for his daughter's research project, and the following year, he had them write a paper containing the experimental results. During this process, Lee even directed them to manipulate the experimental data to support the paper's hypothesis.

This paper was published in an SCI-level journal. Lee's daughter, having only observed the experiments two or three times, not only had her name included in the research report but also submitted the paper to various academic conferences and won awards. Based on this paper and her award record, she was admitted to the Seoul National University School of Dentistry in 2018.

Both the first and second trials found the charges against Lee and his daughter to be guilty.

In July 2024, the first-instance court stated, "The crime severely undermined the fairness and public interest of university entrance exams," adding, "It is a serious crime that cannot be taken lightly, given the immense impact educational background has on social status." However, for Lee's daughter, the court granted a suspended sentence, stating, "It is judged appropriate to give the still-young defendant a chance at rehabilitation."

The second-instance court in February of this year reached the same conclusion.

The appeals court rebuked him, saying, "He forced graduate students, who were in no position to refuse the unjust orders of a professor, to perform various experiments, write reports, and even manipulate research data for his daughter's benefit." The court further criticized him, noting, "The culpability is high, as he attempted to persuade or intimidate graduate students after the crime was discovered, and shifted the blame onto others."

Meanwhile, Lee was dismissed from the university in June 2019, and Seoul National University revoked his daughter's admission to the School of Dentistry in August of that year. Lee's daughter filed a civil lawsuit against Seoul National University challenging the revocation, but she ultimately lost the case in March of last year.