Seoul: A former professor has been handed a finalized prison term for coercing her students to produce a research paper to facilitate her daughter's admission into a prestigious dental school, legal sources confirmed on Wednesday. The 67-year-old, who was affiliated with Sungkyunkwan University's School of Pharmacy, was found guilty of obstruction of business. She had directed her students to perform animal experiments and draft a paper using the findings from 2016 to 2017, which subsequently aided her daughter's entry into Seoul National University's School of Dentistry in 2018.

According to Yonhap News Agency, the Supreme Court in May upheld a lower court's decision sentencing the former professor to 3 1/2 years in prison. Her daughter received a suspended 10-month term. The court also disclosed that the professor instructed her students to manipulate certain data to reinforce the experiment's hypothesis.

The daughter, who was named as the co-author of the paper, had minimal involvement, attending only a few sessions as an observer. Despite her limited participation, she was awarded for the research, which was published in a reputable international journal. In light of these events, the former professor was dismissed from Sungkyunkwan University in June 2019, and Seoul National University annulled her daughter's admission two months later.