On March 18, 2026, Dongguk University's president signed a Gender Equality Plan (GEP), committing the institution to survivor protection and gender-based violence response. Seven weeks earlier — on January 28, 2026 — a Japanese Studies professor had been arrested by Japanese police on charges of non-consensual indecent assault. He was still teaching when Korean media broke the story on March 24.

The GEP was not a cultural shift. It was a document. This case is the evidence the document could not contain.

Three Departments. Ten Months. The Same Institutional Protocol.

Date Event
Early 2025 Dongguk Human Rights Center begins processing Heritage Studies case — Board of Directors takes no action for months1
November 2025 Heritage Studies students publish open letter demanding removal — Board finally convenes after student public pressure1
November 2025 Dongguk faculty disciplinary committee reportedly issues 3-month unpaid suspension (정직) — students protest as insufficient1
January 19, 2026 "Panic Scrub" — Dongguk silently deletes UBC from partners page; Toronto Metropolitan University reverted to dead name "Ryerson"2
January 26–27, 2026 Japanese Studies Professor S sexually assaults Korean woman at Okayama, Japan lodging facility
January 28, 2026 Japanese police arrest Professor S
February 2026 Okayama District Prosecutors issue non-prosecution (불기소) — Dongguk takes zero action
March 18, 2026 Dongguk University president signs Gender Equality Plan
March 19, 2026 EU Delegation Counsellor Wessely forwards GEP compliance briefing to RTD units
March 23, 2026 Japanese Studies students publish open letter: multi-victim testimony of sustained sexual violence in the department
March 24, 2026 Korean media breaks Japan arrest story — same day as EU-Korea Research and Innovation Day, Seoul
March 26, 2026 Dongguk Human Rights Center begins investigation — Professor S still teaching all 3 courses
After March 24 Japanese Studies department Korean-language website temporarily goes offline
April 1, 2026 Dongguk scrubs Film School faculty — two female research professors removed, senior professor moved to Emeritus3
April 3, 2026 Megalodon archive captures Korean-language Japanese Studies faculty page — all faculty still listed, no suspension recorded4

Part I: The Japan Arrest — What Dongguk Didn't Act On

On January 26, 2026, beginning at 10:15 PM, Professor S — a 40-year-old Dongguk University Japanese Studies faculty member — allegedly committed non-consensual indecent assault against a Korean woman in her 20s at a lodging facility in Okayama City, Japan. He was arrested by Japanese police on January 28.5

In February 2026, the Okayama District Prosecutors Office issued a non-prosecution (불기소) disposition.5

Dongguk's institutional position: "Japanese police do not notify Korean universities the way Korean police do. We learned through media on March 24."5

The problem with that position is not primarily procedural. It is the outcome. A professor was arrested for sexual assault in January. He returned to campus. He taught three courses through the semester. He sat across from students week after week. Dongguk administration was not notified — and did not seek to be notified.

A non-prosecution disposition is not a finding of innocence. The 2023 revision of Japan's sexual violence law (Article 176, now classifying non-consensual indecency as 不同意わいせつ罪) broadened the definition to center entirely on a lack of consent, making it easier to prosecute. By stark contrast, Human Rights Watch notes that South Korea's penal code (Article 297) legally defines rape strictly as intercourse by means of "violence or intimidation," explicitly rejecting lack of consent as the core standard.6 The Justice Ministry's rejection of the Ministry of Gender Equality's 2023 reform proposal ensures domestic victims face nearly insurmountable legal barriers. The arrest record exists in Japan. The students knew. The institution did not act.

Part II: The Open Letter — A Department's Documented Sexual Violence Record

On March 23, 2026, the Japanese Studies student association and victim-students published a 대자보 (open campus letter) titled: "Disclosure of Facts Regarding the Inappropriate Conduct and Abuse of Power of Japanese Studies Professor S."789

A 대자보 is not a complaint filed in private. It is Korea's civil society tradition of nailing accountability to the wall when institutional channels have failed. In this case, they had been failing for months.

The Direct Sexual Violations

Students documented a sustained pattern of verbal sexual violence directed at students:

  • "When dating your boyfriend, there's something to watch out for. Find a man who gives you lots of massages in bed." — Direct intrusion into student intimate lives, weaponizing the mentoring relationship.
  • "A former girlfriend of mine was getting dental braces — touching inside with my tongue was interesting. I'm a pervert, so that's how I am." — Deliberate self-disclosure of deviant sexual behavior to students under pedagogical authority.
  • "If you get a boyfriend, I can book a hotel, but you have to tell me interesting stories." — Transactional sexual proposition framed as paternal generosity.
  • On female students' social media body-profile photos: "I sometimes go in and zoom in. Very grateful." — Documented voyeuristic surveillance of students' physical bodies.
  • "What would it be like if your boyfriend did cosplay with you [in bed]?" — Explicit coerced sexual imagining directed at a student.
  • On students from other departments wearing traditional Chinese dress (치파오): "From a professor's standpoint, this is an industry bonus for me." — Public sexual objectification of students, with a potential racialized dimension: the traditional Chinese dress worn by students from another department suggests the comment may have been directed at Chinese or Chinese-heritage students present at a cross-departmental event.
  • Disclosed explicit details of his marital sex life to students without consent.
  • Bought clothes for female students: "Wear this next time we meet. Since I bought it, it feels better on you." — Ownership language deployed through financial dependency.

The Non-Consensual Physical Contact

The open letter documents physical intrusion under cover of social pressure:

  • Professor S told students he "liked holding hands" — then pressured students to hold hands, stroked the back of their hands, and kissed the back of their hands without consent
  • Touched students' necks and hair without consent — a documented pattern of treating students' bodies as accessible

The Grade-Backed Coercion Architecture

  • "If you're useful to me, don't worry about your grades." — Explicit linkage of student compliance to academic outcomes
  • Made students care for his child during office hours
  • Made students feed research office fish — domestic servitude substitution
  • Used students as personal secretaries at department events
  • Forced students to attend evening drinking sessions

This is not a personality profile. This is a documented grooming architecture: the systematic deployment of institutional access, grade leverage, and serial boundary violation to condition students into non-resistance.

Part III: Why Students Couldn't Speak Sooner — and What Made Them Speak Now

The students said it themselves:

"We have been burying these facts, unable to speak, out of fear of retaliation and the structural limits that make it impossible to share harm within the department."7

"It was the reporting of the Japan arrest in the media that gave us the courage to bring this forward again."7

Why rely on a foreign arrest? Because in South Korea, telling the truth about abuse is frequently prosecuted as a crime.

Under Article 307 of South Korea's Criminal Act, individuals who publicly reveal facts that damage another person's reputation can be imprisoned for up to two years—even if every word is demonstrably true.10 The only defense is proving the disclosure was "solely for the public interest" (Article 310). Powerful entities, from politicians to the entertainment and K-Pop industries, routinely weaponize these criminal defamation laws against victims of sexual violence or bullying to force their silence.10 The threat of immediate counter-suits allows institutions to exert total control over vulnerable students who lack a media platform or public defense — a pattern documented directly in cases where Dongguk's corporate partner Sidus Corporation used legal threats to demand retraction of the very advocacy that reached these students.11

The students in Dongguk's Japanese Studies department were trapped in this legal paralyzation. The Korea Women's Development Institute's 2020 government study found that 61.5% of female arts and culture students in Korean universities experience sexual violence, and that fear of retaliation is the documented primary reason for non-reporting.12 A Korea Times survey of Kyung Hee University graduate students found that 65.5% of those who experienced sexual violence identified their professor as the perpetrator.13 They were living the statistical norm, under the explicit legal threat of being criminally prosecuted if they warned others about their abuser.

The Japan arrest — a public criminal record established by a foreign police force and covered by Korean national media — served as the external legitimization trigger. It provided the indisputable "public interest" shield required under Article 310 to survive a criminal defamation lawsuit. When the institution cannot be trusted to protect students, and the law criminalizes their survival, they must wait for a fact that the institution cannot quietly erase. An arrest in a foreign jurisdiction was that fact.

Part IV: Dongguk's Institutional Response — Two Months of Nothing, Then Process

March 24, 2026: News1 breaks the Japan arrest story. Dongguk's statement: "The case is serious and significant. We are currently verifying the facts."5

March 26, 2026: Dongguk Human Rights Center accepts the complaint — filed under one victim's name, but containing testimony from multiple victims within the department. Faculty and the department chair are briefed. Their stated position: they will "request the school exclude him from teaching as soon as possible."14

As of March 26: Professor S was still teaching all three courses. The lectures continued through the week following the public open letter and the national media coverage.

Dongguk's public statement: "We will complete the Human Rights Center investigation and decide on disciplinary measures based on the findings."14

This is word-for-word the same process architecture that produced the Heritage Studies outcome in November 2025: Human Rights Center investigation → bureaucratic deliberation → faculty personnel review → Board referral → disciplinary committee → outcome protested by students as insufficient.1 In that case, the result after a formal complaint in early 2025 and months of Board inaction was reportedly a 3-month unpaid suspension. Students publicly protested the ruling as inadequate.

The institution does not investigate structurally. It produces a managed outcome, timed to minimize public pressure, designed to preserve institutional standing rather than restore student safety.

Part V: The Website Record — What Dongguk's Digital Footprint Reveals

The Korean Department Website: Temporarily Inaccessible

Following the March 23–24 open letter and national media coverage, the Xiaohongshu author who first reported the case to Chinese-language audiences documented in a pinned update: "The Dongguk University Japanese Studies department website is no longer accessible."15

By April 3, 2026, the Korean-language faculty page at dj.dongguk.edu had been archived by Megalodon.4 The archive confirms the page was accessible and shows the current faculty roster — with no indication of suspension, removal, or disciplinary action against any listed professor.

The English Page: Institutionally Nonexistent

The English-language page for the Institute of Japanese Studies, archived via Wayback Machine on April 3, 2026, displays exactly one sentence of content:16

"Institute of Japanese Studies — 컨텐츠 준비중" ("The contents are being prepared")

An international student, an EU compliance reviewer, or an overseas academic attempting to evaluate the Dongguk Japanese Studies department through English-language institutional materials would find nothing. No faculty listed. No contact information. No research profile. A placeholder.

Furthermore, the only English-language media coverage of the sexual violence case was published by a domestic Korean financial outlet's translation service (Seoul Economic Daily), which materially omitted the most explicit verbatim quotes from the students' open letter.17 It was not covered by major internationally circulating media, completing a documentation blackout for the international community.

This is the same two-tier information management documented in Dongguk's Film School faculty page — where the English page continues to present a materially different picture than the Korean-language page for international audiences.3

The Pattern: Five Documented Digital Erasures

Date Erasure Event
After July 25, 2025 차승재 silently removed from Korean-language Film School (DIC) faculty page
July 24, 2025 Female research professor 이정현's profile silently edited — real-time tokenism caught by Visual Ping
January 19, 2026 "Panic Scrub" — UBC deleted from partners page, Toronto Metropolitan University reverted to dead name "Ryerson"2
April 1, 2026 DIC film faculty purge — two female research professors removed, senior professor moved to Emeritus
After March 24, 2026 Japanese Studies Korean-language department website goes offline following national media coverage

The website removal follows the pattern: accountability pressure → institutional digital erasure. The difference here is that by April 3, 2026, the Korean faculty page had been recovered by archiving infrastructure — and Professor S remains listed on it.

Part VI: The GEP-Reality Gap — What a Document Cannot Do

The timeline speaks without interpretation:

  • January 28, 2026: Professor S arrested in Japan
  • February 2026: Non-prosecution issued — Dongguk takes no action
  • March 18, 2026: Dongguk University president signs Gender Equality Plan
  • March 23, 2026: Students publish open letter — months of sexual violence documented
  • March 24, 2026: National media breaks the story — professor still teaching

The GEP Task Force was formed in December 2025 — the same month our documentation of Dongguk's 34 falsified international partnerships was circulating internationally.18 The GEP was not already in development. It was triggered by external accountability pressure. The document was signed six days before the nation learned that a Japanese Studies professor had been arrested for sexual assault seven weeks earlier and was still teaching.

The GEP provides two monitoring indicators for gender-based violence response: awareness campaign counts and training completion rates.19

Neither metric would have caught anything that happened here. Not the arrest. Not the months of grooming. Not the student silence enforced by grade threats. Not the professor still standing in front of his classes on March 24.

The EIGE standard for Gender Equality Plans requires institutions to "engage the whole organisation including staff, students and stakeholders" and to establish survivor reporting mechanisms with independent oversight.19 Dongguk's GEP contains no survivor reporting mechanism. The Human Rights Center — as documented in November 2025 — told students only that it "cannot share specific procedures and progress" of the investigation, leaving them in procedural silence for months before any outcome.1

A compliance document that the institution's own review body uses to enforce silence is not a safeguard. It is a liability shield.

Conclusion: This Is the Third Department. This Is the Pattern.

From Early 2025 to April 2026, Dongguk University's institutional response to documented sexual violence has followed an identical sequence:

  1. Human Rights Center confirms violations
  2. Board delays action
  3. Students go public when institutional channels fail
  4. Media covers it
  5. Institution initiates "investigation"
  6. Professor continues teaching through the process
  7. Outcome is insufficient; students protest

The Heritage Studies case produced a 3-month unpaid suspension (정직).1 The Film School case produced a "paper faculty" management strategy — Emeritus transition, contact erasure, two female researchers removed from the public roster.3 The Japanese Studies case is still unresolved.

Three departments. Confirmed violations in each. Zero professors permanently removed. Zero structural changes between cases. One Gender Equality Plan that cannot reach any of them.

The KWDI 2020 government research found 61.5% of female arts students in Korean programs experience sexual violence.12 A Korea Times survey of Kyung Hee University graduate students found that 65.5% of those who experienced sexual violence identified their professor as the perpetrator.13 Dongguk's Film, Heritage Studies, and Japanese Studies departments have each now generated documented public testimony that maps onto those figures with forensic precision.

The question for the RTD units currently reviewing Korean Horizon Europe proposals for GEP conformity is no longer whether Dongguk's Gender Equality Plan meets formal eligibility criteria. It is what GEP compliance means when the institution signing the document has demonstrated, across three departments in ten months, that its internal mechanisms cannot produce faculty accountability.

Gender Watchdog documents racialized sexual violence in Korean universities and the Korean film industry. We are supported by EROC (End Rape On Campus).

*advocate@genderwatchdog.org https://genderwatchdog.org*

Sources

  1. Gender Watchdog, "New Sexual Violence Case at Dongguk University: 'Your Voice is Sex-Appealing' — Professor F's Abuse and the 4-Month Institutional Silence" (December 2025). Documents Heritage Studies case. Externally corroborated by Maeil Kyeongjae (Nov 24, 2025): https://v.daum.net/v/20251124133901823. Board delayed; 3-month suspension reportedly issued; students protested as insufficient. https://blog.genderwatchdog.org/new-sexual-violence-case-at-dongguk-university-professor-f-abuse-and-institutional-silence/ ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6

  2. Gender Watchdog, "The 'Panic Scrub': Dongguk University Deletes UBC Partners, Reverts to 'Dead Names' in Failed Cover-Up" (January 19, 2026). https://blog.genderwatchdog.org/panic-scrub-dongguk-deletes-ubc-reverts-to-dead-names/ ↩ ↩2

  3. Gender Watchdog, "Two Profiles, Two Cleanup Tracks: Dongguk Scrubs Its Film Faculty Eight Days After the EU-Korea Research Summit" (April 2026). Documents the April 1 faculty purge: two female research professors removed, BK21 credential eliminated, senior professor transitioned to Emeritus with all institutional contact stripped; English faculty page not updated. https://blog.genderwatchdog.org/dongguk-faculty-purge-paper-faculty-eu-cleanup-april-2026/ ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  4. Dongguk University Japanese Studies, Korean-language faculty page (Megalodon archive, April 3, 2026). https://megalodon.jp/2026-0403-1415-48/https://dj.dongguk.edu:443/professor/list?professor_haggwa_type=PROFH_006 ↩ ↩2

  5. 뉴스1 (News1), 신윤하, "[단독]동국대 교수, 日서 '강제추행' 체포 뒤에도 교단에…학생들에겐 '난 변태'" (March 24, 2026). https://n.news.naver.com/mnews/article/421/0008844962 ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  6. Human Rights Watch, "South Korea Cancels Plans to Update Definition of Rape" (Feb 1, 2023). https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/02/01/south-korea-cancels-plans-update-definition-rape ↩

  7. 한겨레 (Hankyoreh), 장종우, "일본서 '강제추행' 체포 동국대 교수, 학생들에게도 성희롱 일삼아" (March 24, 2026). https://n.news.naver.com/mnews/article/028/0002797358 ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  8. 헤럴드경제 (Herald Economy), 한지숙, "학생 손등에 입맞춤·'마사지 많이 해주는 남자 만나라'는 교수, 학생 '교단 퇴출' 촉구" (March 24, 2026). https://n.news.naver.com/mnews/article/016/0002618633 ↩

  9. 한국일보 (Hankook Ilbo), "동국대 교수, 日서 성추행 체포 후에도 교단에…학생들 '상습적 성희롱'" (March 24, 2026). https://n.news.naver.com/mnews/article/469/0000921337 ↩

  10. San Diego International Law Journal, "K-Pop's Secret Weapon: South Korea's Criminal Defamation Laws" (2022). https://digital.sandiego.edu/ilj/vol24/iss1/7/ ↩ ↩2

  11. Gender Watchdog, "Sidus Legal Threat Backfires: Evidence of Corporate Panic and Institutional Cover-Up at Dongguk University" (May 2025). Documents how Sidus Corporation, a film production company based at Dongguk University, sent aggressive legal threats demanding retraction of sexual violence advocacy to silence whistleblowers. https://blog.genderwatchdog.org/sidus-legal-threat-backfires-evidence-of-corporate-panic-and-institutional-cover-up-at-dongguk-university/ ↩

  12. Korean Women's Development Institute (KWDI), "Current Status of Sexual Violence Against University Students in the Culture and Arts after the Me Too Movement and Policy Issues" (2020). 61.5% of female arts students experience sexual violence; fear of retaliation is the primary documented barrier to reporting. https://eng.kwdi.re.kr/inc/download.do?ut=A&upIdx=102748&no=1 ↩ ↩2

  13. Korea Times, "Professors are main perpetrators of sexual abuse at graduate schools: survey" (Jun 2, 2021). https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/southkorea/society/20210602/professors-are-main-perpetrators-of-sexual-abuse-at-graduate-schools-survey ↩ ↩2

  14. 뉴스1 (News1), 신윤하, "[단독] 日서 강제추행에도 교단서 '성희롱' 의혹 교수…동국대 조사 착수" (March 26, 2026). https://n.news.naver.com/mnews/article/421/0008850632 ↩ ↩2

  15. Xiaohongshu, 韩韩留学·专注韩国, "东国大学教授性骚扰学生，内容十分炸裂…" (March 25, 2026). Pinned update: "最新跟进，东国大学日本学科官网已经打不开了" ("Latest: the Dongguk University Japanese Studies department website is no longer accessible"). 67 comments; 208-like comment identifies Professor S's likely surname from the department roster. ↩

  16. Dongguk University, English-language page for Institute of Japanese Studies (Wayback Machine, April 3, 2026 — displays "컨텐츠 준비중 / The contents are being prepared"). https://web.archive.org/web/20260403050932/https://www.dongguk.edu/eng/page/390 ↩

  17. Seoul Economic Daily (English), "Dongguk University Students Demand Ouster of Professor Over Harassment Allegations" (March 24, 2026). https://en.sedaily.com/society/2026/03/24/dongguk-university-students-demand-ouster-of-professor-over ↩

  18. Gender Watchdog, "Semantic Fraud: How Dongguk University's Global Network Collapsed (34 Fake Partners Exposed)" (December 2025). https://blog.genderwatchdog.org/semantic-fraud-how-dongguk-universitys-global-network-collapsed-34-fake-partners-exposed/ ↩

  19. Dongguk University, "Gender Equality Plan" (published March 2026). https://www.dongguk.edu/eng/page/1173

    EIGE GEAR Toolbox, "What is a Gender Equality Plan (GEP)?": https://eige.europa.eu/gender-mainstreaming/toolkits/gear/what-gender-equality-plan-gep ↩ ↩2