It all began well enough. Michael Foster joined his wife, a South Korean, in Seoul in 2010 with a new doctorate in English literature and a three-year, tenure-track contract at prestigious Korea University. His aim was to build a life in a country that seemed increasingly cosmopolitan and vibrant. Two years later, Mr. Foster, an American, has abandoned his job and is involved in a bitter dispute with his former employer.
Now back in New York with his wife, he says that he felt unwelcome at the university from the start, and that his relationship with faculty members and others deteriorated over time. He says he was even accused of racism by one of his students. “One of the students in evaluations said that I insulted Korea,” he recalls. “The student said, ‘If America is so much better, you should go back.’”
Officials of Korea University decline to speak publicly in detail about the matter, but one representative says the dispute began when Mr. Foster broke various campus rules. Mr. Foster declined to appear before a university ethics committee and has submitted his resignation.
The dispute is the latest in a string of cases in which American professors have struggled with working in South Korea, which is pushing hard to internationalize its higher-education system by recruiting foreign talent.
The nation’s top science college, the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, known as Kaist, is being sued by Steven Jordan, who was fired from his post last year as assistant professor of finance at its graduate business school. Mr. Jordan says he was unfairly dismissed for working at another university without permission and for unauthorized travel, the result, he says, of an administrative “misunderstanding.”
Lan Yoon, a spokeswoman for the university, says, “We believe that Kaist has taken due process to terminate employment with Steven Jordan and consider his lawsuit against Kaist very unfortunate.”
Seoul National University, one of the nation’s most prestigious institutions, faces criticism that it has provided inadequate support for foreign faculty members and students. Some of them have complained to the news media that most faculty meetings are conducted in Korean, and documents written only in that language. Professors from outside South Korea who work at private universities have told The Chronicle, while requesting anonymity, that their pay and conditions are worse than those of their local colleagues.
South Korean universities have more than tripled their foreign hires in the past decade, according to the Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology. Although just 5,000 of the country’s roughly 78,000 full-time faculty members are from outside its borders, the proportion will almost certainly grow in coming years, as South Korea tries to globalize and upgrade its insular higher-education system.
Recruiting, Not Retention
The speed of internationalization has produced problems. Institutions often put much more effort into recruiting foreign professors in a short-term bid to raise rankings than into retaining them, says Gary Kennedy, an American who has taught in the English departments of three universities in South Korea over the past eight years. They fail to prepare for foreign hires, he says, adding that employment contracts, policies, and support structures are often lacking.
When they arrive, new foreign professors struggle to integrate into Korean faculty, where older professors dominate departments in a system Mr. Kennedy describes as “feudal.” “Anyone who lacks a champion is likely to be in a weak position,” he says, so when foreign professors run into problems, “there is nobody to turn to for help and advice.”
In his experience, the employment arrangements seem to favor Korean academics, with many foreign professors working on contract. Dispute resolution often involves little more than simply agreeing with the most senior Korean faculty member, Mr. Kennedy says.
In private, some senior Korean faculty members agree with many of these criticisms, but they insist that the problems are the inevitable growing pains of a system in transition.
The nation’s two most highly regarded science-and-research institutions, Kaist and Pohang University of Science and Technology, known as Postech, have put enormous effort into internationalizing their faculty. Both have recruited dozens of foreign professors, made English the campus lingua franca, and built apartments for the international faculty.
The aim, says Nam Pyo Suh, president of Kaist, is to create institutions where the careers of foreign professors can thrive. Mr. Suh, who earned his Ph.D. in the United States and held positions at the National Science Foundation and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, acknowledges that non-Korean professors face “difficulties” in South Korea. “But conditions for international faculty will continue to improve. For Korea’s globalization effort, recruiting more international faculty is a top priority.”
Critics say, however, that the problems of integration are compounded by Korean universities’ defensiveness and hypersensitivity to foreign criticism. Mr. Foster, the former professor at Korea University, thinks the student’s accusation of racism against him began when he referred to homophobia in Korean culture during a course on the history of romance.
Distrust of foreigners is a nationwide issue and must be put in context, says Paul Z. Jambor, an assistant professor in English for academic purposes at Korea University. “It likely stems out of the Japanese colonial period, in which one of the main aims of the Japanese armed forces was to eradicate Korean culture and the Korean spirit.”
Donald C. Bellomy, an American who teaches history at Sogang University, in Seoul, says foreign professors who want to work in South Korea must be prepared to adapt to a culture that has not always been welcoming toward outsiders, “and for good reason.” The culture is, however, “in some respects more open than one would expect, given its history.”
Mr. Foster does not disagree but says, “I’m not the kind of person who can be a pioneer.”
Since he left Seoul, the dispute between Mr. Foster and Korea University has escalated. The professor says he is considering legal action, while the university says he is the subject of a police investigation for sending threatening messages to senior faculty members. Mr. Foster denies that accusation.
However the fight is resolved, Mr. Foster says, he won’t return. “You couldn’t pay me enough to go back to South Korea,” he says.
Correction (1/9/2013, 12:31 p.m.): This article originally said incorrectly that Mr. Foster had been fired from Korea University. He was not. He has submitted his resignation, which has yet to be processed by the university. The article has been updated to reflect this correction.
