Ms. Kim Keon-hee, who has been detained and indicted on allegations including Deutsch Motors stock manipulation, intervention in the nomination of Myung Tae-gyun, and solicitation and bribery involving the Unification Church, appears at the closing hearing on charges of violating the Capital Markets Act at the Seoul Central District Court in Seocho-gu, Seoul, on the 3rd. Joint Press Corps

Moon Si-yeon, president of Sookmyung Women's University, belatedly apologized for the delay in verifying the master's thesis of Ms. Kim Keon-hee.

On the 3rd, President Moon posted a statement on the university website, saying, “I deeply apologize to the public for the fact that the handling of this matter was not carried out more swiftly,” and “I fully recognize responsibility for having caused disappointment and concern to many people due to the university responding slowly, and I once again apologize for causing concern to the public.”

President Moon said, “Immediately after taking office as the new president on September 1 last year, I reconstituted the Research Integrity Committee in accordance with the rules and promptly requested deliberation on the thesis allegations,” adding, “However, at that time there were no regulations regarding the revocation of graduate degrees, and there was no precedent for the procedures.”

According to President Moon, the Research Integrity Committee held a total of 19 discussions from September 23 last year to June 19 this year. After formally seeking authoritative interpretations from the Ministry of Education and other relevant agencies to confirm legality, the university amended its academic regulations and revoked the degree.

President Moon stated, “We are comprehensively overhauling systems related to research ethics to prevent a recurrence,” and “Taking this incident as an opportunity, we will thoroughly review and improve internal rules and procedures so that we can respond to similar cases more swiftly and strictly.”

In 1999, Ms. Kim received a master's degree from the Graduate School of Education at Sookmyung Women's University with a thesis titled ‘A Study on the Pictorial Characteristics of Paul Klee’. In December 2021, allegations were raised that this thesis had been plagiarized, and Sookmyung formed a Research Integrity Committee in 2022 to conduct an investigation. This past June, Sookmyung revoked the master's degree awarded to Ms. Kim. Although the regulations require the main investigation to begin within 30 days after approval of the preliminary investigation and to be completed within 90 days from the start date, the verification of this thesis took two years, drawing criticism.