▲ Park Won-soon, the mayor of Seoul
During the recent parliamentary inspection of the administration, a controversy arose regarding the appointment of executives to fill visiting professor positions at UOS. This was first issued when members of the ruling party began to raise doubts that Park Won-soon, the mayor of Seoul, was personally involved in the appointments of visiting professor in UOS, a university directly under the influence of the city of Seoul. In fact, for the last five years, seven out of the eleven UOS visiting professors were former officials who have worked in high-ranked positions for the city government.

Also, the number of visiting professors who were appointed increased during the mayoral tenure of Park. These visiting professors are not required to give lectures but can still receive monthly payment ranging from four million to six million won depending on their career levels which is the reason Park?s personal involvement becomes a problem.

With regards to this controversy, Seoul city officials clarified that this process is done independently by the personnel committee, and found no problems. The purpose of these visiting professors is to introduce several types of field experience into the college curriculum.

For this reason, most of the national universities have already hired visiting professors in a way similar to UOS. In our case, due to our specialization in Urban Sciences, Seoul officials were often appointed to these positions. Moreover, there exists a process which demands a consensus before appointing a new visiting professor by the personnel committee at UOS consists of members who received recommendations.

By Noh Yo-been

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