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Verification Panel, “First Lady Kim Keon-hee’s Kookmin University Dissertation Goes Beyond Plagiarism. It is a Forgery... a Criminal Act”

입력 2022.09.07 18:18

Kang Yeon-ju

Members of a public verification panel across academia to verify plagiarism in first lady Kim Keon-hee’s theses announce the results of their investigation at the Korea Press Center in Seoul on September 6. This day, the panel argued that plagiarism was involved in Kim’s doctoral dissertation and three theses published in academic journals. Bak Min-gyu, Senior Reporter

On September 6, a group of professors and academic organizations argued that first lady Kim Keon-hee’s doctoral dissertation from Kookmin University and her three research papers published in academic journals all included plagiarized materials. Their argument squarely countered the conclusion reached by Kookmin University, which claimed that there was no academic misconduct involved in the first lady’s works.

This day, a public verification panel across academia to verify the alleged plagiarism in first lady Kim Keon-hee’s theses including fourteen faculty and academic organizations nationwide held a press conference to report their outcome at the Korea Press Center in Jung-gu, Seoul. The panel announced, “We confirmed extensive plagiarism in four theses that first lady Kim wrote from 2007 to 2008.” The panel explained, “We discovered elements that suggested she used highly unusual materials from a fortune-teller’s website and a traditional fortune telling (sajupalja) blog without permission” and argued, “This is a serious act of crime.”

As for Kim Keon-hee’s dissertation, “A study on the development of fortune-telling contents using avatars,” for which she received a doctoral degree from the Graduate School of Techno Design at Kookmin University in 2008, the panel said, “Of the total 860 sentences, 220 were literally copied without stating the source,” and added, “Of all the 147 pages of the dissertation, only eight pages properly stated sources.” The panel claimed that the first lady copied and pasted parts of a thesis by Gu Yeon-sang, a professor in the Division of General Education at Sookmyung Women’s University, materials from knowledge exchange sites, and posts from blogs on fortune-telling and life (saengnobyeongsa: the suffering of birth, old age, sickness, and death).

They also found elements which showed that Kim used the patent and business plan of a certain company without permission in her dissertation. The panel argued, “The copyright and key contents of a business plan that was developed with government funding was plagiarized for the personal interest of obtaining a doctoral degree (by first lady Kim),” and accused the first lady of violating the Copyright Act and the Subsidy Management Act. The panel also argued that the first lady plagiarized details, sentences, and words as well as ideas in three theses she wrote in 2007.

As for the thesis, “A study on the retention and withdrawal of members according to the satisfaction and discontent of online fortune-telling content users (2007),” which stirred controversy for the English translation of the title, “retention of members” as “member yuji (spelling of the Korean word for ‘retention’)” in the abstract, the panel said, “The thesis had a total of 118 sentences, and among them 42.4% or 50 sentences were exact copies from newspaper articles and other dissertations.”

In the case of “A study on the development of WiBro content using Anytar: Focusing on the development of face reading and marital-harmony reading avatars (2007),” the panel found that Kim had copied posts from an online community on the web portal Daum and a blog named, “Gwansang Gunghap (face reading and marital harmony reading)” along with a business proposal of a particular company. The panel also claimed that the first lady copied parts of nine dissertations and two papers in academic journals without stating the source in her thesis, “A study on factors affecting e-satisfaction when online shopping mall consumers make purchases (2007).” The panel also criticized, “In this paper, Kim literally copied the analysis results from Kim Yeong-jin’s Hankuk University of Foreign Studies master’s thesis, and this is stealing another researcher’s achievement.”

The details released by the verification panel this day ran counter to the announcement by Kookmin University’s research ethics committee on August 1. At the time, Kookmin University said, “The percentage of plagiarism was 12-17% in the four theses by first lady Kim,” and concluded that there was no misconduct. Yang Sung-ryul, the chairperson of the Korean Private University Faculty Association and a member of the public verification panel explained that the panel compared every line in Kim’s theses one by one and said, “The four theses had problems serious enough to think they were a forgery not to mention works of plagiarism.”

The verification panel said they could also verify Kim’s master’s thesis, which is currently under review by Sookmyung Women’s University. Yang said, “We have finished the primary verification of that thesis as well,” and added, “We plan to discuss the need for additional verification after seeing the results of the Sookmyung Women’s University investigation.”