Instruct: Given a question, retrieve documents that can help answer the question.
Query: When was Sang Min Leo Whang born?
Sang Min Leo Whang (November 10, 1962- ) is a South Korean psychologist, author, and popular political commentator. His has empirically investigated "the Korean Peoples' identity & their mass-psychology" by connecting it to a variety of issues such as self, online world identity, consumption behavior, love & relationships, power desire and political decision making.[1][2] He has mainly researched the different psychological types of people and how the human mind works in on and offline settings. His most well-known projects are WPI (Whang's Personality Inventory),[3][4] research on the identities of online game players, and research on politicians' public images.[5] Whang has been a professor at Sejong University from 1994-1997 and at Yonsei University from 1994-2016. In January 2016, he was dismissed from his position as a tenured professor at Yonsei University, by excuse of violating an ethical rule, 'having a job outside of professorship without the permission of the university president.' There is controversy and speculation surrounding his dismissal. The unusual dismissal of a tenured professor from his position was a retaliatory decision made because of Whang's criticism against Geun-hye Park, the 11th President of South Korea. She was later impeached and dismissed from the presidency. Whang's dismissal was planned and executed by the late president of Yonsei University, Gap Young Cheung who denied his involvement of this case as a president of university. The late president Gap Young Cheung had a strong reputation that he had wished to hold a government or Blue House position during Ms. Park's presidency. After the impeachment of Ms. Park, Cheung retired from the university and remained as an honorary professor. Whang's dismissal is appreciated as an example of an evidence of latent oppression on academia by power. Dr. Whang currently runs a podcast WhangShimSo, where he provides free consultations on personal and career conflicts, and commentates on the diverse social issues in Korean Society.[6]
Afterwards, Yuna Kim's side dropped the suit against Sang Min Whang saying “we do not want to be caught up in this anymore.” However, the possibility was mentioned that this decision was made conscious of the potential controversy that may rise when the fact comes out that Yuna Kim cannot normally become a student teacher because she did not attend almost all of the undergraduate classes at Korea University if the defamation lawsuit progressed and the problem of “whether [Yuna Kim] went to teaching practice diligently” and “whether [Kim] has the qualifications to practice teaching” had to be proven. Some compared Yuna Kim with ex-Tae Kwon Do athlete Dae Sung Moon's example and the opinions “raising national prestige itself does not give [star athletes] the right to skip school” and “this needs to be a starting point to face the inconvenient truth that we cannot foster ‘studying athletes’” were raised.[42]
Gap Young Cheung, who removed Sang Min Whang from Yonsei University, was one of the figures being mentioned as a nominee for the first chief of staff or the minister of economy under Geun Hye Park's regime, but he unable to take a government post.[26] Afterwards, he tried for reappointment of Yonsei University's president, but failed after “being ranked as the lowest among potential candidates on performance and qualifications in an opinion gathering session by Yonsei University faculty.”[27] After the next term (18th) president of Yonsei University was decided to be Yong Hak Kim, the dismissal procedure for Whang progressed quickly. Gap Young Cheung signed the dismissal resolution on his last day of his president term and announced it is “chance” that the two dates coincide.[28] Some analyze Gap Young Cheung's removal of Sang Min Whang, who continued to maintain a critical tone of Geun Hye Park's regime on a daily basis, as a move Cheung made to become appointed to public office under Geun Hye Park's regime. However, Gap Young Cheung claimed in an interview with the press that he “did not know” about Sang Min Hwang's dismissal from Yonsei University's professorship and that he only followed the decision of the disciplinary committee even though he was Yonsei University's president when the dismissal process was in progress.[29] These actions by Gap Young Cheung along with the illicit admission of Yoo Ra Chung into Ewha University is analyzed as a case of how university personnel have transformed into, not people who pursue learning, but rather agents of political power under Geun Hye Park's regime.[30][31]
Sang Min Whang who was a regular on CBS Radio’s “Mi Hwa Kim’s Everybody” program criticized colleges’ preferential treatment of its sports stars on May 22, 2012.
Sang Min Whang's research that became grounds for termination was “An Investigation into the President’s Image” that started in 2014. It was shown the image the public has of the president can be divided into 8 types through this research. The following is the body of the research explanation that was published in Shin Dong Ah.
Sang Min Whang said “[I] did not [use the word “genitals” to] belittle women as a whole but used [the word] as an academic term to differentiate between societal role and biological difference,” but Sung Joo Kim retorted, “his action is one of not being able to distinguish things you should say and things you should not say.” On this, Sang Min Whang analyzed if Sung Joo Kim “is idolizing candidate Park as a divine being and not as a person then it shows the state of mind as is that considers the word “genitals” as profane and blasphemous.”
Whang: But do you know where the difference comes from when we say woman or man?
In May 2015, Sang Min Whang researched the types of image the public has about the then President Geun Hye Park using Q Methodology and published his findings in the monthly magazine ”[20] According to Whang’s research, people perceived Ms. Park mainly as a “puppet.” The “puppet” image the majority of people had of Ms. Park was divided into more detailed types: foolish ruler, our VIP, and face Madame. The study simultaneously found the public expected a president with the image of a “leading hero” as an alternative to Park. This meant the public already knew through her image that Park is incompetent and, at the same time, only a sort of “ceremonious figure” with someone else calling the shots. She was being perceived as a leader that did not have the ability to govern a nation.
Unlike Sang Min Whang's intention to discuss “Korean universities’ utilizing students as a means for gaining publicity and the preferential treatment of elite sports athletes,” he became embroiled in the controversy of “fact checking Yuna Kim’s teaching practice.” A teacher from Yuna Kim's teaching practice site, Seoul Jinseon Girls' High School, refuted in an interview on “Mi-hwa Kim’s Everybody” to “please check the fact that [Yuna Kim] is coming to school and diligently coming to practice teaching” and on June 6 Yuna Kim's management company, All That Sports, sued Sang Min Whang for slander saying “there are parts of what he said that are untrue that he spoke of as if it were true and because that damages the athlete’s honor we are taking legal measures.” However, they also left the possibility of dropping the lawsuit open by saying, “we can drop the suit at any time if professor Whang apologizes for the false information that was not checked.”[40]
Sung Joo Kim, who was the co-chair of the presidential campaign committee of Saenuri party at the time, visited Yonsei University in protest and demanded Whang's resignation from professorship in relation to this incident and appeared on Hyun Jung Kim's news show and testified that she received a promise from Yonsei University to send Sang Min Whang to the disciplinary action committee.[38] Sung Joo Kim's comment that “Yonsei University promised sending Sang Min Whang to the disciplinary action committee” as she demanded Whang's resignation shows Yonsei University's decision to terminate Whang is not unrelated to the Geun Hye Park regime.
Whang: It is a difference in roles, right? For example, what is one of the more representative roles?
Whang: Not long ago a person who was an assemblywoman from Saenuri party [said] to a small business CEO…
[Gordian Knot Episode 219 relevant section recording (Sang Min Whang / ●: Jong Jin Park)]
In <<The President and Louis Vuitton>>, Sang Min Whang thought (luxury good) consumption and elections clearly showed how Koreans’ dress up their desires instead of saying what they want, thinking that if they choose the vaguely “good thing,” it will produce the results they want. When you make a decision to dress up your desire without being able to distinguish between “what you really want” and “what you are saying you want,” you feel “duped” and cannot be satisfied even after spending money. On the other hand, he suggested “the mind’s MRI,” a development from Q Methodology, for suppliers to use as a method to diagnose the consumer's hidden desire and the desire they freely talk of in a societal setting.[17][18][19]
Whang: So that is an issue of genitals as a woman what role…
Whang: And then raising children. Isn’t being a woman a phenomenon that happens because of it? When looking at that we say that person is a woman. We don’t say she is a woman because her genitals are different from a man. But is candidate Geun Hye Park in that situation? Is she in a category that coincides with that woman or no? Did candidate Geun Hye Park get married? Did she give birth to children? Did she raise children?
Park: But there was no instance of taking a bribe.
<<WPI (Whang’s Personality Inventory)>>
Whang; Mother. Being a mother means having given birth to children, right? In Korean society living as a woman does not mean being born with genitals different from man, but it means [a difference in] role, when does that most representative thing about that role appear?
After publishing his “President Geun Hye Park Image” research in Shin Dong Ah magazine, Sang Min Whang was sent to Yonsei University's disciplinary committee for “violation of prohibition on holding a job outside of professorship and violation of prohibition on engaging in commercial activity”[21] and the former Yonsei University president, Gap Young Cheung, who was being mentioned as a potential minister nominee in Geun Hye Park's regime, passed the dismissal motion on his last day in office on January 29, 2016.[22] Yonsei University has claimed there is no relation between Sang Min Whang's research and the exclusionary disciplinary action and that he was removed because of “holding concurrent offices,” but through the Soon Sil Choi affair it was proven Sang Min Whang's research predicted the hidden commander's existence. The retaliatory decision to dismiss a tenured professor, along with Yoo Ra Chung's illicit admission incident, showed that universities lost academic autonomy and became an instrument of political power.[23][24]
Since his postdoctoral fellowship, Sang Min Whang focused on the “human mind that operates in the Internet.” Under the guidance of Rob Kling at University of California, Irvine, he started research on the mind in the PC network environment and was a pioneer in early research on the virtual world. He accurately predicted that shopping and other real life activities will occur over the Internet and classified the characteristics of the type of person who first finds new electronic products and the characteristics of the consumer that spreads the use of new electronic products. (Refer to <<Digital Freaks Decide Future Consumption>>)[9]
Professor Ho Geun Lee from Yonsei University, who agreed to an interview with Dong-A Ilbo newspaper, claimed that if Whang had only “violated the prohibition on holding a job outside of professorship and the prohibition on engaging in commercial activity” then he would not have been dismissed and implied that Whang was dismissed because he was negligent in carrying out his duties as a professor. Lee cited examples such as Whang's absence from meetings with professors, scheduling all of his courses to teach on one day during the week, and managing an outside research lab named Wisdom Center even though Whang did a lot of research. However, it was confirmed Sang Min Whang did not receive any salary or engage in any commercial activity for profit and only conducted research by accepting projects through Wisdom Center. In Korea and in the U.S., it is difficult for the excuse “holding another office outside of professorship” to be the grounds for dismissal because many professors in both countries establish their own research labs to work more freely on research or they hold offices at companies in related areas of study.[25] Ultimately, according to Lee's interview, Yonsei University presented the reasons that Whang was “negligent” because he did not attend the professor meetings and fit all of his courses into one day to remove a tenured, full professor with satisfactory research performance. This kind of measure taken by Yonsei University is one of the examples of how people who satirized Geun Hye Park were oppressed under the regime.
After receiving his BA in psychology in 1985, Sang Min Whang continued his studies at East Graduate School under professor Bong Yeon Suh's guidance. And in September 1986, he received a scholarship from The Korea Foundation for Advanced Studies to study Social Cognitive Development under Sheldon White's guidance in Harvard University's psychology doctorate program.
1) Q Methodology Development In order to find a method that can investigate the characteristics of each individual living in a sociocultural environment instead of assuming an absolute and immutable attribute, Sang Min Whang organized a seminar called “What is Research Methodology?” with his students after starting his post in Yonsei University. One of the people invited to this seminar was Heung Gyu Kim, a former professor at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, who introduced Q Methodology to Whang. Afterwards, Whang studied the different thoughts people had from each other on various topics such as “Internet Psychology,” “Future Electronic Products,” etc. According to Sang Min Whang, Q Methodology makes it possible to do a quantum-mechanical interpretation of the mind unlike the existing factor analysis that was being used in psychology. That is, psychology based on the existing R-technique factor analysis defines each factor as an absolute characteristic that everyone has and only differs in the extent, while Q Methodology made it possible to deduce how each factor comes together differently and manifests in different ways according to each individual in different environments. It applied the fact that like how the subject can be conscious of the observer and decide on its movements and change, an individual can be aware of her environment and her own characteristics to manifest them (Refer to Q Workshop Manual). Afterwards, Sang Min Whang felt the limitation of interpreting each factor deduced from Q Methodology analysis as one characteristic according to the traditional analysis method. This was because he thought there was a need to separate the positive, easily shown disposition and the negative or hidden disposition that both appear within a single factor instead of abstractly lumping them together. In order to overcome this limitation, he divided the statements arranged according to the weight attributed to each statement into high, middle, and low and interpreted them as each different characteristics drawn from one factor. Afterwards, the middle-ranked statement was excluded because it could not reveal a clear disposition about the relevant factor and one factor was interpreted by being divided into two extreme dispositions shown by the highest-ranked statement and lowest-ranked statement. This is the principle of “extremes meet” being applied to Q Methodology and by interpreting one factor into two extreme dispositions, not only was it clearer how each disposition shows itself in a studied society and but it also became possible to show each characteristics’ interaction with one another. In addition, by dividing one factor into two extremes, it was possible to find out in Q Methodology research that proceeds with a comparatively small number of participants not only the disposition that is easily admitted by people or accepted in a societal situation (mainstream), but also the characteristic people are reluctant to show or only a minority of people have (non-mainstream). This new interpretative method based on Q Methodology is found in a number of Sang Min Whang's research. 2) Research on Koreans’ Psychology, “How to define and measure Korean peoples’ personalities?”
Whang: There was no instance of taking a bribe because none was given. If it was given, it would have been taken.