Credentials Scandal Claims Another Victim
by Brendon Carr
Star English teacher and KBS Radio “Good Morning Pops” host Lee Ji-Young has become the latest Korean “star” to be unmasked as an academic fraud. The Chosun Ilbo reports that Lee claimed bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Brighton in England but that she had never actually attended that university. (She did, however, enroll in a UK language institute for a year and then attended a “polytechnic” school—which I presume to be a vocational/technical institute—in Brighton for a year.)
It will be interesting to see whether Ms. Lee is fired over this. Legally speaking, she has an argument that KBS would not have cause to terminate her employment, because she was recruited to host her program based on her past performance as a media host, and a college degree in English is not material to whether she is qualified to host one of those “educational” programs. It’s possible there is some regulation which says that anyone “teaching” English on TV must hold a teacher’s certificate or be a native speaker of English (such a regulation does exist in respect of “home-shopping” sale of insurance products, where each person who appears in the advertisement must hold an insurance agent’s license), and that would change things in respect of Ms. Lee’s legal position.
However, it’s pretty clear she’s toast.
UPDATE: One hour after I posted this, the Marmot’s Hole relates that Ms. Lee has been forced off her show. This is beginning to look like a social wave—like small-town suicides come in waves once someone goes first. If you’re an employer who has a “suspicious” employee that you want gone, now is definitely the time to confirm credentials and put the squeeze on. A background check at the time of hiring is always better, but in our experience whenever there are rumors floating around the office that a certain employee (usually a real bully who brings everyone else down) is a fraud, the investigation always turns up something.
Contact my friend Mr. Jungnam Chi, former Los Angeles Times Seoul Bureau reporter and now an investigative consultant, at his company Providers Korea for a quotation on background checks. Another excellent independent consultancy, which in the past has done excellent work for us (but these days I’m not sure they’re still doing background investigations as they have a thriving security-consulting practice) is Prescient Consulting. Plus the usual Hill & Associates, Kroll and other suspects are around town as well.
UPDATE 2: This just in! The social wave is confirmed. We’ve now got an admission that overly plastic-surgeried “Miss World Cup 2002”, pop tart Mina is not 29 as she originally claimed, but a decrepit 35! Stay tuned for more jaw-dropping revelations. (Thanks to the Marmot’s Hole.)
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