A former professor who mobilized students to write a paper so her daughter could enter a dental school (graduate school of dentistry) has received a finalized prison sentence.
The Supreme Court's First Division (presiding Justice Chun Dae-yup) said on the 22nd that it finalized the lower court ruling that sentenced a person surnamed Lee (67), indicted on charges of obstruction of business and fraud, to three years and six months in prison on May 29. Her daughter, a person surnamed Lee (31), received a finalized sentence of 10 months in prison, suspended for two years.
The mother, Lee, who was serving as a professor at Sungkyunkwan University's College of Pharmacy in 2016, was indicted on charges of ordering a dozen or so graduate students to conduct animal experiments and ghostwrite a paper for her then college-student daughter's research project. In the process, Lee also instructed them to falsify the paper's experimental figures. The paper was even published in an SCI (Science Citation Index)-level journal.
Lee's daughter participated only to the extent of observing the experiment two or three times. However, based on this paper and awards, she was admitted to Seoul National University's graduate school of dentistry in 2018. When these facts became known, Seoul National University revoked Lee's daughter's admission to the graduate school of dentistry in Aug. 2019.
At the first trial, Lee was sentenced to three years and six months in prison. The court said, "The crime in this case undermines the fairness of college admissions and causes public cynicism and distrust toward the overall education system, making its nature poor," and added, "Many graduate students complained of mental distress," in explaining the sentencing.
At the first trial, Lee's daughter was sentenced to 10 months in prison, suspended for two years. The court said, "It is appropriate to grant the still-young defendant an opportunity for reform and rehabilitation in society, and therefore the execution of the sentence will be suspended."
Lee, her daughter, and the prosecution appealed, but the appellate court dismissed all appeals. The Supreme Court dismissed the final appeal, finding that the lower court did not misunderstand the law.