Professor Shin Jung-ah, director of Gwangju Biennale, took sixth place

Professor Shin Jung-ah, director of Gwangju Biennale, took sixth place on the list. 2007-07-14

The Gwangju Biennale is Korea’s most well-known biennial art festival that first took place in 1995. Touted as one of the nation’s finest art festivals, Gwangju Biennale drew artists from all over the world to take part in the celebration of traditional and modern art. Given the prestige of this global event, the person overseeing the whole organization and operation of the festival should be of equal esteem and reputation. However, it was recently disclosed that the director of the Gwangju Biennale, Professor Shin Jeong-ah of Dongkuk University, has been fired from her post of biennale director for forging her academic credentials. The disclosure sent shock waves throughout the Korean art circle. Professor Shin was nicknamed “Cinderella of the art world” for her overnight celebrity status. Claiming to have received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Kansas and a doctorate degree from Yale, she started her art career in Korea as a curator at reputed Keumho Art Museum in the mid-1990s. Then she went on to serve as a chief researcher for Seonggok Art Museum and professor for Dongguk University, and finally selected as a chief supervisor for the Gwangju Biennale. All these she achieved in her thirties, a rarity in the art world where seniority and experience often take precedence over talent. Even before the whole affair was unveiled, some people were doubtful of her record, but no one checked out her credentials. Suspicion however mounted when Professor was named the director of Gwangju Biennale, even though she won only one vote in the preliminary poll. Some accuse the Biennale secretariat for succumbing to outside pressure to appoint her to the post, but the board of directors for the Gwangju Biennale strongly denies the accusation. This is not the first time that Professor Shin came under criticism. At the time of her appointment as professor at Dongguk University in September, 2005, she was suspected of plagiarism and was not assigned any classes. The Korean art world has been embroiled in scandals in recent years. About two months ago, the Grand Art Exhibition of Korea, the most prestigious art exhibit in the nation that awards top prizes to talented artists, came under fire when it was discovered that some judges were bribed to award certain entrants. Students of certain professors were favored over those with no connections. It was an open secret in the art world that such shady dealings were going on and personal ties or degrees from overseas universities rather than real talent were more crucial determinants of how one’s career panned out. In the wake of back-to-back scandals, the Korean art circle is taking a serious and harsh look at itself. Having admitted that universities placed more weight on the candidates who graduated from famous foreign universities when recruiting professors, they decided to tighten selection criteria and verify the candidates more thoroughly. For instance, instead of just accepting candidates’ academic records at their face value, the universities should contact the schools listed on the records and confirm their genuineness. In the case of Professor Shin, all the university officials had to do was simply ask Yale University to send them her transcript, which they didn’t do until the problem came to the fore. Just going through this easy step would have saved Dongguk University and the Gwangju Biennale organizing committee a lot of grief and embarrassment.

 

 

 

Biennale Art Director Accused of Phony Credentials

Dongguk University Assistant Professor Shin Jeong-ah Korea's art community is in chaos as evidence has emerged that suggests Dongguk University Assistant Professor Shin Jeong-ah (35) may have lied about her educational background and theses. Shin is the art director of next year's Gwangju Biennale.   "Amid suspicions about her doctoral art degree from Yale University, Dongguk asked for confirmation from Yale in the name of university dean Oh Young-kyo," a Dongguk official said. He said the school received a response from Yale in the name of President Richard Charles Levin stating that Shin's degree is fake and that she was never registered as a student there.   Suspicions have been growing since last Wednesday when Shin was appointed the biennale's art director. Biennale officials have made no official statement yet, but have shown a document backing Shin's claims -- a faxed response from Yale to a Dongguk inquiry in Sept. 2005.   In the fax, Pamela Schirmeister, associate dean of Yale Graduate School, confirms that Shin entered Yale's art history department in Aug. 1996 and graduated in May 2005 with a doctoral degree in art. Dongguk said at a Wednesday news conference that Yale has agreed to look into the fax and that Dongguk would also investigate.   In a telephone interview with the Chosun Ilbo Tuesday, Shin, currently on a business trip in Europe, said, "I certainly did receive a degree from Yale which is proven by the document Dongguk received from Yale in 2005. I will make a statement and take legal action as soon as I return to Seoul."   (englishnews@chosun.com )

 

 

Gwangju Biennale director falsified qualifications

Dongguk University opens inquiry into forged degrees and plagiarized thesis

» Gwangju Biennale 2006 Professor Shin Jeong-ah of Dongguk University, who is also the recently-appointed artistic director of the 2008 Gwangju Biennale, was found to have forged her academic degree. At a press conference on July 11, Lee Sang-il, an official of Dongguk University said, “On July 5, our university asked for confirmation of Shin’s doctoral degree from Yale University in the United States, but Yale sent a reply saying that the university hadn’t granted her a doctoral degree and that there was no record of a student named Shin Jeong-ah.” Shin has insisted that she obtained a doctoral degree from Yale and completed her thesis, entitled “Guillaume Apollinaire: Catalyst for primitivism, for Picabia and Duchamp,” in May 2005. But some have called into question the authenticity of her degree since she was appointed a faculty member of Dongguk University. The doctoral thesis she claims to have written in 2005 has been said to be almost identical to a work which was originally published by Ekaterini Samaltanou-Tsiakma in 1981. Shin was recruited for employment at Dongguk University based on the application she presented at the time. In the resume she submitted with her application, she claimed to have earned a bachelor of fine arts degree at Kansas State University in 1994, a master in business administration in 1995 from the same university and a doctoral degree in art history from Yale University. According to the Yonhap News Agency, her bachelor’s and master’s degrees have also found to have been forged. She has held positions at the Ministry of Culture & Tourism and the Sungkok Museum, among other responsibilities. She was recently appointed as the co-artistic director of the Gwangju Biennale, one of the nation’s most prestigious international artistic events. “We are going to open a disciplinary hearing and plan to take the appropriate measures. We have already appointed a fact-finding committee which will be headed by Han Jin-su, a high-ranking official of the university,” said Lee. The Gwangju Biennale Foundation plans to articulate its position at a press conference on July 12. Shin was unavailable for comment on the allegations surrounding her credentials. Please direct questions or comments to [englishhani@hani.co.kr]

Posted on : Jul.12,2007 16:23 KST Modified on : Jul.13,2007 15:43 KST

 

 

Thursday, July 12, 2007

UD's 'thesdan Playmate, David... ...sends her this amazing university story. I'm excerpting from an article in The Independent: Until this week, [Shin Jeong-ah], 35, was at the top of her profession. Claiming to have a doctorate from Yale and a master's degree from Kansas University, she was the youngest professor at Seoul's prestigious Dongguk University and the head curator of the Sungkok Art Museum, home to some of Korea's most prestigious exhibitions and the recipient of millions of pounds in corporate sponsorship from the country's biggest conglomerates. ... Shin's latest exhibition was a glitzy affair featuring the American artist William Wegman. This week she was named co-curator of the 2008 Gwangju Biennale, one of the biggest fine art events in South-east Asia - she would have been the biennale's youngest curator. In a country that takes art seriously, and has an exceptionally large number of museums for its size, many saw Shin's appointment as a sign that the young curator was destined to become the leading figure among Korea's legion of art gallery administrators. But others were less impressed. Academia and the art world have always been prey to petty jealousies, and Shin became the subject of a rumour mill that spread gossip about her qualifications. on Monday rumour became fact when the University of Kansas issued a statement saying Shin had attended classes there between 1992 and 1996 but had never graduated. Officials at the Gwanju Biennale initially supported her. They produced a document backing her claims to have a Yale doctorate - a faxed response from the Connecticut-based school to an inquiry by Dongguk University in September 2005. The fax purported to be from Pamela Schirmeister, an associate dean of Yale's Graduate School. It states that Shin entered Yale's art history department in August 1996 and graduated in May 2005 with a doctoral degree in art. Dongguk said on Wednesday this week that Yale had agreed to look into the fax. In a telephone interview with Seoul's Chosun Ilbo daily newspaper on Tuesday, Shin said, "I certainly did receive a degree from Yale, which is proven by the document Dongguk received from Yale in 2005. I will make a statement and take legal action as soon as I return to Seoul." But the firestorm consuming her career intensified when Yale issued a terse statement yesterday stating that Shin did not graduate with a doctorate in 2005, as she had claimed, and had, in fact, never been registered with the university at all. It was also disclosed that the dissertation Shin submitted to Dongguk University, a study of the French poet Guillaume Apollinaire, had been stolen from another academic. The thesis is almost identical to a work which was originally published by the Greek scholar Ekaterini Samaltanou-Tsiakma in 1981. The Gwanju Biennale committee immediately cancelled Shin's appointment. Shin, who is currently in Paris but plans to return to Seoul today, has yet to comment on Yale's emphatic denunciation of her alleged credentials. In Korea she faces a lengthy prison sentence for fraud and Dongguk University and the Gwanju Biennale have said they plan to seek legal sanctions against the young woman they once saw as their most precocious star. ... "The reason she had this amazing career is that she was very polite," said the director of a large private museum. "She took great care of the older generation of artists. This was a strategy for her. She charmed the old guys and they loved her and supported her career." ... Dongguk's checks of Shin's claims to have three degrees were cursory at best. They received no reply from Kansas in 2005 and only a fax, now disputed, from Yale. Some are not surprised that Shin was able to slip through the cracks. "Talented people with an advanced degree from a prestigious international university are rare in Korea," said an art critic at a leading art magazine in Seoul. "That made it easy for her package to be accepted. People wanted to believe that she was for real." For a society where women are still expected to know their place, Shin also had the benefit of being different. "She is a very extroverted character and she was very talented at self-promotion," the director of a museum in southern Seoul said. "That's what started the rumours about her qualifications. She was just too good at pushing herself forward." The world will have to wait for Shin's own explanation of her Ripleyesque fraud but the answer may lie in the midst of one of Korea's worst disasters, the 29 June 1995 collapse of the Sampoong department store in Seoul, which killed 501 and injured 937. Shin was in the store that day and came close to death. Aged 24, she was crushed beneath the collapsed building and was trapped for more than 24 hours. She suffered multiple fractures and intestinal injuries. "A beach towel wrapped itself around my face and saved it from harm," Shin told the Chosun Ilbo a few years after the disaster, when her rarefied career in the art world was just beginning to take-off. "Because my face was OK, I have my second life and I'm very lucky. Everything is very easy for me. Before the disaster I was a very introverted character. Now I am aggressive. After surviving Sampoong I developed a very powerful driving force and sense of initiative." A driving force that, apparently, led her to invent a luminous academic career which was nothing short of a fantasy. Consequently Shin finds herself buried again, this time beneath the rubble of her own fanciful dreams and aspirations. [Most of the writing in this article is okay, but this sentence is too Tennessee Williams for UD.] The difference is that she is likely to be trapped by the debris of her lies for much longer than 24 hours. In the Chosun Ilbo interview Shin was described as a "phoenix, who rose from the ashes". Now she has been unmasked as a fraud whose career has gone up in flames. Given the unforgiving nature of Korean society, it's unlikely she will rise again. Quite a tale. Couple of comments. This is an especially destructive case of fraudulence because this woman has not only destroyed her own life, but damaged professional prospects for Korean women generally. Note that she's a plagiarist as well. We've seen again and again on this blog that people sleazy enough to do X almost always turn out to be sleazy enough to do Y. Oh, and one other thing. If she opts to try the American approach to her problems (see James Frey), she'll use that Sampoong collapse for all it's worth. Brain trauma. Posted at: 7/12/2007 08:19:00 PM Comments