Foreign profs get course on sexual harassment

An unusual two-day sexual harassment prevention education course exclusively designed for foreign professors will be held at a Seoul university starting today.

The Hankuk University of Foreign Studies said yesterday it would proceed with an hour-long session for 182 foreign professors, more than 30 percent of its faculty, each day. The session will be held in English.



"In the past, we didn`t have enough foreign professors to hold such education sessions in a foreign language. But with their increased numbers, we have translated the government-distributed information booklet into English and will hold the education course, all in English, once a year," a university official said.

The content of the session will include informing professors of how the concept and standards of sexual harassment are set at schools in Korea and how such action impacts the school, the victim and the offender as well as giving them specific exemplary cases of sexual harassment, university officials said.

It will also offer some management measures involving the subject, they added.

Lee Myeong-jo, who is the course instructor, said the educational session had been designed to prevent any possible sexual harassment activity that could result from cultural differences.

Sexual harassment at schools has been a widely debated topic that has gained much attention here over the past years.

A survey released by the National Human Rights Commission of Korea last year revealed that about six out of every 10 athletes at middle and high schools suffered from sexual harassment at school.

Of the surveyed 1,139 male and female athletes, 63.8 percent said they had been either physically or verbally abused in a sexual way by their coaches and senior classmates.

In October, a Seoul National University professor was suspended from teaching for three months for sexually harassing a female student.

He was punished for personally calling some of his students several times, asking them to join him to watch movies in the weekend. The professor mandated students to go to the theater with him on weekends and discussed the movies as part of his course during the semester.

After finding out more than one female student had similar experiences of receiving personal calls, school authorities opened a disciplinary committee and gave the professor a three-month suspension, labeling his behavior as sexual harassment.

By Cho Ji-hyun



(sharon@heraldm.com)