Um, as long as you know whose arse to kiss, all is well. The Korean press is brimming with stories of Ms. Shin’s prowess at kowtowing to the powers-that-be in the Korean art world. ‘Specially if the said power went to Seoul National. Also she’s not bad at stealing credit — practically all of her shows were first conceived by someone else.

The Wolgan Chungang comes out tomorrow with a full interview with Ms. Shin’s mother and other relatives.

http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/media/features/5967/

http://search.ft.com/ftArticle.....0521005956

Maybe he and Ms. Shin can go bowling together.

“She claimed to have survived the 1995 Sampoong Department Store collapse after eight hours of confinement under broken concrete. She called it a traumatic experience that made her pursue good for the rest of her life, and recalled how things started to look easy after that.”

Maybe she meant to say the experience made her decide to pursue “the good life?” Obviously, when the concrete hit her head she realized how easy that could be accomplished by lying through her arse. Something tells she will be the next Korean falling star to experience a convenient “nervous breakdown.”

“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.”

Actually, it’s not. They could have prevented this if they hadn’t been so eager to put her to work…and knowing what you’re doing always helps.

PS. Screening application forms for identity fraud was one of the things I did when I worked for the government, actually.

I had already read the Hannie article, which is why I posted the list. Sorry I didn’t refer to it. I should have known better: my graduate degree is real.

You know, it took me a total of 5 minutes to find that info, but that’s only because I wasted 4:30 minutes trying to find a list of the students who graduated in 2005 (apparently, they don’t publish those online…I wouldn’t either since they make money off the transcripts and there’s the risk of identity theft).

There is still the possibility that the list has an error or that it does not include all the dissertations (last one listed is 2005s (summer)). Then again, she claims she graduated in May of 2005, which would be ‘2005s’, right?.

I also tried to find on the web any references to ‘Yale’ associated with the different possible romanizations of her name. I found nothing, so I reordered her name: first name last, last name first, etc. Still nothing.

I then searched for the full and partial title of her dissertation and the only thing that came up was the one written by Katia Samaltanos-Stenström, (1981) and one authored by Katia Samaltanos (1984, an admitted revision of 1981 dissertation by the same title). The only references to her name and the title of the dissertation are from news articles about the investigation.

So, based on the information that is available online and Yale’s own research on the matter, it appears that she never published or submitted her dissertation, but we’ll have to wait until Dongguk is done with their investigation to know that for sure. After all, the information available on the web isn’t always complete and Yale, despite being a fine school, isn’t above making mistakes.