The former university professor who forcibly fed human feces to his pupil-turned-employee was convicted with eight years in prison Tuesday.

The Supreme Court found Jang, 53, guilty of abusing his 30-year-old pupil for two years since March 2013.

Jang was indicted in August 2015 under charges of feeding human feces to the victim, as well as beating him with an aluminum bat and spraying tear gas over his face which was covered by a plastic bag.

The first trial gave Jang 12 years in prison, with his actions condemned as “psychological murder and unpardonable abuse of human dignity.”

However, in the second appeals trial the verdict was reduced to eight years following the victim’s wishes and due to omission of a few charges from the legal documents.

Jang had hired the victim to work for his academic society but later began to abuse him for his “unsatisfactory work style.”

Jang’s other pupils Jang, 25, and Jeong, 28, were respectively given four and two years in prison for taking part in the violence.

Another accomplice Kim, 30, did not appeal for retrial and will go through the 18-month term he received in the original trial.

The former professor Jang is also being accused of personally using 111 million won ($99,300) from his design society’s corporate fund and illicitly taking 33 million won of a research subsidy from the National Research Foundation of Korea.


By Lim Jeong-yeo (kaylalim@heraldcorp.com)