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A celebrated U.S.-educated figure in Korea¡¯s art world has been revealed as a fraud who faked her undergraduate, post-graduate and doctoral degrees. What¡¯s even more surprising is the fact that the woman not only taught as a professor at a university in Korea but was appointed as the director of the Gwangju Biennale. Her employer, Dongguk University, on Wednesday said Asst. Prof. Shin Jeong-ah¡¯s doctoral degree from Yale was fake and there was no record of her being a student at the ivy league college. Dongguk said it received official confirmation from Yale that Shin has never been enrolled there. As a result, the Gwangju Biennale on Wednesday cancelled Shin¡¯s appointment. Shin said she got her bachelor¡¯s and master¡¯s degree from another university in the U.S., but it was later revealed that she had dropped out of that school in her junior year.
Shin is the most-celebrated curator in Korea¡¯s art world. She started off in 1997 as the curator of a major gallery when she was just in her mid-20s and presently serves as a university professor, chief of research at a prominent museum and member of the recommendation committee of Art Bank at the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea.
In our modern society, formal credentials mean everything, and people who fake them are no rarity. Still, it is surprising that someone was able to fake their credentials and wield so much influence for a decade in the field of art, where expertise and artistic insight are essential. Shin was reportedly well versed in spoken and written English and had good people skills. She planned top-flight exhibitions, won numerous awards and wrote columns for a major daily newspaper. In other words, she was good at what she did.
Looking at Shin¡¯s experience and achievements makes one doubt the importance of formal ¡°credentials¡± in the art and academic worlds. Does the vellum really translate into practical skills? In the Korean art world, there seems to be a tendency to pass judgment on someone based simply on their degrees and career backgrounds, because there is no accurate way to determine their abilities. Shin did commit the crime of brazenly faking her degrees. But she may have also been poking fun at the culture of credentials, which is especially rampant in Korea¡¯s art world.
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