"Is there another professor like this?"… Utilizing graduate students for daughter's admissions (CG) [Courtesy of 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 upheld by the Supreme Court.

According to legal circles on the 22nd, the Supreme Court's First Division (Justice Cheon Dae-yeop presiding) recently finalized the lower court's ruling, which sentenced a 67-year-old former pharmacy professor at Sungkyunkwan University, surnamed Lee, to prison on charges including obstruction of business.

The sentence for Lee's daughter, who was indicted alongside him, was maintained at 10 months in prison, suspended for two years.

Lee was put on trial on charges of having his daughter admitted to Seoul National University's graduate school of dentistry in 2018 by using papers ghostwritten by his graduate students as her research accomplishments.

In 2016, Lee ordered his graduate students to conduct animal experiments for his daughter's research project while she was still an undergraduate, and the following year, he had them write a paper based on those results. In the process, Lee also instructed them to manipulate experimental data to support the paper's hypothesis.

This paper was published in an SCI-level journal. Lee's daughter, who had only observed the experiments two or three times, not only had her name listed on the research report but also submitted the paper to various academic conferences and won awards. Based on these papers and awards, she was admitted to Seoul National University's graduate school of dentistry in 2018.

Both the first and second trial courts found both Lee and his daughter guilty.

In July 2024, the first trial court pointed out, "The crimes severely undermined the fairness and public nature of university entrance examinations," adding, "Considering the profound impact of academic background on social status, these are serious crimes that cannot be taken lightly." However, regarding Lee's daughter, the court suspended her prison sentence, stating, "It is judged appropriate to give a young defendant a chance at rehabilitation."

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

The appellate court rebuked the professor, stating, "He directed graduate students, who were in a position where they could not easily refuse his unfair orders, to not only conduct various experiments and write reports for his daughter but even to manipulate research data." The court added, "He is highly blameworthy for attempting to persuade the graduate students to change their testimonies after the fact, threatening them with lawsuits, and shifting the blame for his actions onto others."

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