This still feels wrong to me, but I may misunderstand something.
I think you may be overlooking something.
The Oxford dictionary that rests on a shelf behind me says, "liberal arts: arts subjects such as literature and history, as distinct from science and technology." It further marks the term as "chiefly North American." That may be so, but "arts and sciences" has been a standard dichotomy here in Britain. In my day at school, you were expected to choose one side or the other for higher education. I chose arts and did four languages in my sixth-form.
I can also remember a big debate when social sciences came on the scene (from America) and were generally despised as arts pretending to be sciences.
There is, of course, an older meaning, or should I say 'several meanings' from Greek times when logic, rhetoric, music and astronomy were thought to be the main intellectual fodder, and through medieval times when the first universities were founded. But that's not relevant here.
The bit that I think you are overlooking here is that Myongji began as a women's college (under a different name), and women then were still not expected to become engineers and the like. Furthermore, it was not what we then used to think of a pukka university. It was what we use called a polytechnic, or college, in England, widely regarded as a step below a real university and focusing heavily on vocational subjects. We used to have the same distinction at school level: grammar schools (doing Latin) were at the top of the pile, then came technical schools for boys and commercial schools for girls (who learnt basically secretarial skills). At the bottom were what were regarded as "secondary modern" dumping grounds for the riff-raff. That has all changed. Polytechnics can (and do) now call themselves universities, and almost all schoolchildren are lumped together in massive "comprehensives" - education factories. But the old distinctions remain below the surface.
I would expect similar transitions to have taken place elsewhere, including Korea, but with different cultural emphases. But what they are, I don't know. I take no interest in education systems. America, in particular, is a closed book to me. Korea is, too, except that I have visited Myongji a couple of times and so have done the guided tour. I am, however, making an educated guess when I point to the history of Myongji and assume that their history and/or founding charter may count for something even today.
