Two Hong Kong students on exchange at a university in Seoul told journalists that they were removed from a lecture for wearing surgical masks.
The students, from CityU, have been on an exchange programme at Sungkyunkwan University in Seoul since February.
They now plan to return to Hong Kong before the semester’s end.
One of the students, surnamed Tong, told TVB reporters that she and a friend wore face masks to a lecture as a precaution against the MERS outbreak.
The lecturer asked the pair to leave after they refused to take off their masks.
“Go out, I don’t want you here”, he said.
The lecturer acknowledged Hong Kong’s SARS outbreak in 2003 but he believed that the exchange students should not “bring sensitive feelings and emotions into [his] class and Korea”, Tong said.
Tong also criticised South Korean society for their low awareness about the outbreak, and said she has seen people spitting on the street on multiple occasions (which of course, also happens in Hong Kong).
She believes their indifference could escalate the MERS situation in South Korea.
The university initially responded that some teaching staff regarded wearing face masks to class as a “disrespectful”, and the pair could be barred from continuing their studies if they continued to insist on wearing them.
The students were later permitted to wear masks to classes after an intervention by their home institution, according to Ming Pao.
Steve Chung from CUHK’s Faculty of Social Science told Mingpao that MERS awareness in the South Korean society has been increasing.
Chung, who was also in the country at the time, has witnessed more people taking more precautionary measures in public areas, including wearing face masks on trains.
Photo: Screenshot via TVB
Correction: an earlier comment mistakenly mentioning the Chinese Univerisity of Hong Kong (CUHK) in this article has been removed. CUHK is not involved in this news story.
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