What Drove Sacked EBS Lecturer to Resort to Street Protests?

Yesterday morning at Gwanghwamun Square, Seoul citizens were treated to the spectacle of Doh-ol Kim Yong-ok, a chair professor at Wonkwang University, conducting a one-man protest.A placard that Kim had written himself read, "Enlightened people of this land and this society that forbids even lecturing on classical texts that contain the wisdom of humanity, go and vote!"Kim had been giving twice-weekly lectures on broadcaster EBS, but was reportedly informed suddenly a few days ago that EBS was to stop broadcasting the show. 16 of its 36 episodes had been broadcast."There's no way EBS could have stopped broadcasting lectures that it viewed positively unless some special pressure was exerted," claimed Kim. Some take the view that a compilation of Kim's EBS lectures that was recently published in book form have incurred the displeasure of the government.In the foreword to the book, Kim offers particularly strong criticism of the Four Rivers Restoration Project, calling it a civil engineering project that goes against the environment and against civilization."There are no grounds to claims of external pressure," EBS said. "We have not informed [Kim] unilaterally that the broadcasts are to be stopped, but are at the stage of considering reducing them."Kim's lectures had been criticized for the use of vulgarism and inappropriate vocabulary, and disparaging remarks about particular religions, the broadcaster said.We cannot help but worry, once again, about the forced resignation of figures in broadcasting. It has already happened to MBC radio host Kim Mi-hwa, KBS TV presenter Kim Je-dong and countless others in the middle of their shows.It takes our breath away that this kicking-out trend has reached as far as lectures on classical texts. We do not believe something like Kim's use of vulgarisms provides a legitimate pretext for scrapping a popular lecture series.This kind of event not only exacerbates the current crisis of the humanities, which are treated badly enough as it is; in the long term, it is also bad for the security of the government. (Editorial, The Kyunghyang Daily News. October 27, 2011)

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