Veteran actress Jang Mi-hee may lose her professorship at Myongji College if current allegations regarding her academic background are found to be true.
Jang, who ruled the silver screen during the 1970s and 1980s as one of a popular actress troika, claimed to be a Dongguk University graduate in her profile information and various interviews given over past decades. She has been teaching acting at Myongji College as an associate professor since 1998.
But amid snowballing scandals involving a series of academic record forgeries of prominent figures in the art and culture worlds, Dongguk University confirmed Friday that there is no record that she was ever accepted there.
The 50-year-old has also claimed to have Master's Degrees from Hawthorne University, a distance-learning school in the U.S., and Myongji University. Myongji University has confirmed that she received the degree but announced that it may be annulled if she lied about her academic past, as she would be deemed to have entered the school under fake credentials. Hawthorne University's Web site, meanwhile, states that it is not an institution accredited by a regional or national accrediting agency recognized by the United States Department of Education.
Jang declined to answer whether the allegations were true, Friday. When she met with reporters who asked the questions at Myongji College, Jang only said the college will confirm her background. Myongji College announced that it might decide to fire her after a committee meeting to be held in a few days. But the committee will also take into consideration Jang's career as a prominent actress and her popularity, which was the main reason for employing her as a faculty member, according to the college.
Jang is the latest in a number of prominent Korean cultural figures caught up in a scandal about their academic background. Following curator Shin Jeong-ah whose lie about having a doctorate degree from Yale University was revealed last month, several figures were forced to confess or owned up on their own to academic record forgery. Just last Wednesday, another veteran actress Yoon Suk-hwa admitted lying about attending Ewha Womans University.
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