hankyoreh

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe

Amid allegations that a private Japanese university where a friend of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe served as chairman of the board of trustees unjustly flunked all South Korean candidates taking a department entrance exam, the presiding Minister of Education, Culture, Sports Science and Technology announced plans to demand confirmation from the university.

In its issue published on Mar. 5, the Japanese weekly Shukan Bunshun reported that it had acquired an internal document stating that all South Korean candidates had been given scores of zero in a November 2019 entrance exam by the veterinary medicine department of Okayama University of Science in Ehime Prefecture. According to Shukan Bunshun, the exam that all South Korean candidates failed followed a “recommended exam” format with a maximum score of 200 points, 50 points for each in the four categories: two department tests, an interview, and high school transcripts. All eight South Korean candidates were reported to have received zero points on the interview component.

When asked about the report during a House of Councillors budget committee meeting on Mar. 5, Minister of Education Koichi Hagiuda said he would “request that the university provide confirmation and a swift response regarding the facts.”

“In general, university admission selections require a format that is fair and appropriate,” he also said.

Okayama University of Science is a private university administered by the educational corporation Kake Gakuen. The chairman of Kake Gakuen is Kotaro Kake, who has been a friend of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe since his studies in the US as a young man. In 2017, Kake Gakuen received permission from the Japanese government to establish a department of veterinary medicine, which had been disallowed at other schools for 52 years due to concerns about an excess of trained veterinarians. The scandal has escalated with the disclosure of an internal Education Ministry document stating that the approval of a Kake Gakuen veterinary medicine department reflected “the Prime Minister’s wishes,” leading to allegations that the Prime Minister’s office applied pressure on behalf of Abe’s friend.

An official with Kake Gakuen told Shukan Bunshun, “I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a case to date of someone receiving zero points on the interview. It infuriates me that there was discrimination based on nationality.”

The Shukan Bunshun piece reported that while professors in the department argued that the South Korean candidates had all received zero points because of “clear difficulties communicating in Japanese,” the official disputed this claim.

“At least one of the students received a nearly perfect score in a department examination where the questions were in Japanese. The explanation that every one of the South Korean candidates lacked Japanese language abilities is unconvincing,” the magazine quoted the official as saying.

By Cho Ki-weon, Tokyo correspondent

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