Foreign professor at SNU does a runner?

Front page news on the Korea Times homepage, as a professor of art history hired last month has left her post without giving any notice, apparently.

Andrea Pearson, 45, American professor of the department of archeology and art history at Seoul National University (SNU), abruptly left Korea late September. Majoring in northern Renaissance art, with research interests in gender and sexuality, Pearson came to SNU a month ago for the position of tenured professor.

Her fellow professors, school staff and students remain perplexed. ``We have no idea right now how to deal with this situation. We have been unable to contact her yet,’’ SNU spokesman Chung Min-ho told The Korea Times.

Well, those two paragraphs contradict one another. Is she refusing to come back, or has she not yet been in touch with the university? And the last paragraph might be true to some extent, the part about trying to get as many foreigners as possible to offset past neglect and discrimination, but the dig is a little unfair:

Some SNU professors point out the university has been negligent in a screening system to recruit quality professors and only focused on attracting as many foreign professors as possible. Currently, SNU has some 80 foreign professors and among them, 20 faculty members have permanent professorships.

A bit of googling around shows me that she used to work at Bloomsburg University in Pennsylvania, and has gotten mixed reviews on RateMyProfessor.com. Last month there was a big write-up on her and the other foreign imports on the Seoul National University homepage. An excerpt:

Barely a decade ago, the sight of a foreigner in Seoul would have induced whispering, gawking, and maybe even some frenetic pointing. Even a year before the 2002 World Cup, foreigners in Seoul rarely ventured beyond particular pockets near military bases or hakwon-filled neighborhoods. These days, it's a whole other story.

Are you serious? Forget it, I'm done. Well, I'll give you one more excerpt:

But why, you might ask, is it so important that SNU acquire more foreign professors? Bringing in professors from abroad will no doubt lead to the development of a more diverse and specialized faculty, giving students both a broader and more in-depth education that is essential to survival and success in this age of globalization. For example, Professor Pearson was already recognized in the United States for her sexual-sociological approach to the interpretation of 16th century Western art in her book The Portrait and Women in the Early Europe, which earned her associate professorship here at SNU.

So it looks like they actually did hire somebody qualified and "quality," and didn't just pick up a guy like me off the waiver wire. The KT article says Dr. Pearson was having trouble adjusting to life in Korea. That could be a number of things, but keep in mind the discrimination many foreign professors feel, and the professional dissatisfaction I suspect would come with the territory. Here, for example, is a lengthy translation by Robert Koehler of a piece that ran in the Sisa Journal about foreign professors in South Korea. Here are two lengthy excerpts, but I recommend reading the whole thing plus the comments at the bottom:

Journalist Noh visited four other Seoul universities, but the foreign professors were very reluctant to talk, fearing reprisals from their schools should their identities be revealed. Once they agreed to talk, however, they poured out their concerns about their failure to receive proper treatment. Prof. Yuri (fake name), a German literature professor, said not all, but most foreign professors working at Korean universities wanted not special treatment, but rather to be treated equally.

Prof. Marcus (fake name), who has worked for eight years at another Seoul university, said he’s never received — not even once — notification to attend a professors’ meeting. This, he said, was because he was a foreigner. He said he didn’t even expect a personal office; all he hoped was that the foreign professors wouldn’t be left out of the department meetings. He hoped that the foreign professors would be thought of as colleagues, just like the Korean professors.

A Professor Lee discussed the exclusion of foreign professors from the department meetings. He said the department could not hold the meetings in English for the benefit of the foreign professors, the minority, but if the meeting were conducted in Korean, the foreign professors would feel ostracized. So they aren’t notified at all. The reporter noted that Lee’s explanation meant that foreign professors received no consideration from the school.

. . .

The foreign professors complained that they are treated like hagwon teachers. They said they are sometimes told by the school to teach foreign languages to students outside their department, leading many professors to feel like they’re hagwon teachers.

Foreign professors are also being discriminated against in terms of hours and wages. Prof. Gabriel (fake name), who teaches at a certain university, said Korean professors teach an average of seven hours a week, while the foreign professors teach at least 12 hours. Prof. Karlson (fake name), who teaches at another university, said there were differences in wages, too, although he could reveal specific amounts. He also said Korean professors get bonuses such as research fees, but he didn’t know a single foreign professor getting such bonuses. He claimed that Korean professors get all sorts of allowances that foreign professors could only dream about. Prof. Michelle, who majored in Australian literature, said there was even one foreign professor who was earning only 2.2 million won a month teaching 20 hours a week. The professor eventually returned to the United States out of dissatisfaction with his pay.

Then, of course, there’s the issue of job security. Foreign professors sign contracts of 2-4 years. Yet they are often disadvantaged by the terms and/or timing of their contracts. Prof. Josephine (fake name), who teaches French literature, said there are many cases where schools sign their professors just three days before the start of the semester. If you can’t sign a deal by then, you have to leave Korea immediately. She said it would be nice if schools decided on their contracts at least one month in advance, and that she couldn’t even think about job security. Another professor said the contracts were simple, one-page documents with only the duration of employment, salary and date. Far from honoring the professor, he said, the contracts felt more like slave papers.

About this, the Ministry of Education said the hiring and administration of foreign professors was carried out in accordance with the regulations established by each school. Or, in other words, everything was up to the universities.

Jeong Gyeong-won, the dean of academic affairs at HUFS (where 113 or the 505 professors are foreign), said foreign professors were not assuming positions of responsibility, and because of this, there could be a difference between the way they and the Korean professors are treated, but the school would try to improve this situation. Hong Jong-hwa, the dean of academic affairs at Yonsei University (where 61 of 800 professors are foreign), said foreign professors would unavoidably experience difficulties due to cultural differences, and that work needed to be done to maintain smooth relations between them and their Korean colleagues. In the case of some universities, the journalist couldn’t even get the number of foreigners were employed at their schools.

The situation being such, a growing number of foreign professors were expressing their discontent with their feet. Yonsei’s Dean Hong said one professor even left after just one six-month semester. He said the failure of foreign and Korean professors to harmonize was his school’s biggest problem. Professor Peterson (fake name), employed at a certain university, said he wanted to leave upon the completion of his contract next year, even if the school asks him to stay.

I also quoted that piece in a March entry on a Korean professor who killed herself after she was unable to land a tenured position at a university here.