Part-time college lecturers, often referred to as peddlars of academia for their poor job security and salaries, will finally be acknowledged as proper educational staffers.

The Cabinet on Tuesday passed a revision bill guaranteeing higher paychecks and welfare to 70,000 part-time lecturers nationwide covering about 40 percent of university classes.

According to the bill, the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology will replace the term “adjunct lecturer” with “lecturer,” acknowledging their changed legal status.

Colleges will be banned from dismissing lecturers during their terms, except for in cases where a lecturer has violated their contract or committed a crime.

Contracts will be lengthened to a yearly basis from the current semester basis in order to guarantee job security. This also means that such lecturers will be paid during vacation, the ministry explained.

The lecturing fee will be raised to 80,000 won ($71) per session by 2013 from the current 60,000 won, marking a 33 percent jump.

The lecturers will also be able to subscribe to health, employment, and industrial disaster insurance as well as the national pension. They will also be given office space to continue their research.

Private universities will be required to verify the employment status of their lecturers to the government every year, which will be reflected in the annual evaluation for state subsidies.

The revisions come in response to growing public antipathy toward the poor working conditions of part-time lecturers. In a ministry report last year, an adjunct lecturer’s annual income was estimated at 7.68 million won, way below the per capita gross national income of 20.45 million won.

Adjunct lecturers also face various pressures including demands for kickbacks and other favors to school foundations in exchange for full time employment.

According to an association of adjunct lecturers here, nine such lecturers have killed themselves since 1999, triggering public fury.

“I am glad that the government has finally acknowledged the problems these people face every day,” a former adjunct lecturer told The Korea Herald. She had worked at several universities over the past four years and finally decided to pursue another career.

But she still expressed some skepticism. “I think the schools will find loopholes in the end to take advantage of the lecturers at a bargain price once again. That has always happened,” she said.

By Bae Ji-sook (baejisook@heraldcorp.com)