Claims have emerged on campus that a professor at Seoul National University made hateful remarks about China during class.
According to Yonhap News on the 13th, the graduate student council of the Department of Sociology at the university sent an email to professors requesting the convening of a departmental human rights committee. In the email, the council stated, “There have been repeated hateful remarks about China and Chinese people in the undergraduate class taught by Professor A,” adding that “concerns have been raised about discussions related to conspiracy theories regarding China's interference in Korean politics in the current situation.”
The student council pointed out that Professor A made remarks in class last month such as, “China is backward,” “China is a barbaric country that systematically collects ideological information to control all its citizens,” and “Pro-China forces are operating in our country, and the same goes for political powers.”
They also noted, “These remarks indicate baseless contempt towards Chinese people,” and stated, “Considering that there are many Chinese international students among the department members, this content must be corrected.” In response, Professor A stated that they had never made any hateful remarks about China, explaining that the comments emerged in the context of criticizing the complacent attitude of Korean society towards China’s 'technological rise.'
The Department of Sociology at Seoul National University has been operating a human rights committee at the departmental level since 2017. The committee is an organization aimed at addressing and preventing human rights violations on campus. In the event of controversy over human rights violations, meetings are convened without delay. For cases determined to be human rights violations, they advise immediate cessation, prohibiting contact between the perpetrator and the victim, and separating spaces to prevent secondary damage.