[Yonhap Photo]
South Korea's state human rights watchdog has ruled against a controversial ban on college students who were forced to stay in a campus dormitory for scoring low grades on their English language test.
Ten freshmen at a university specialized in maritime affairs, engineering and sciences were grounded for five weeks last year after they failed to score more than 550 points on the Test of English for International Communication (TOEIC).
Two students filed a complaint with the National Human Rights Commission saying the school had violated their basic rights because they were not allowed to go out of their dormitory day and night.
The commission said Tuesday it has ruled in favor of the students, saying there should be no excessive restrictions on the basic rights of students only because of low grades.
The school has maintained tough regulations that graduation would be put off if students score low TOEIC grades.
Aju News Lim Chang-won = cwlim34@ajunews.com
reporter
Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com
