President Yoon, left, and first lady Kim Keon-hee pose during Yoon's official trip to Spain for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit in this June 30 file photo. Korea Times file

University judges papers 'inappropriate,' draws backlash from DPK lawmakers over results

By Lee Hae-rin

Kookmin University has cleared first lady Kim Keon-hee of allegations of having plagiarized some of her academic papers and dissertation, which she produced when she attended the university's Graduate School of Techno Design.

The university unveiled the results on Monday after an eight-month probe into two of Kim's research papers and her Ph.D. thesis that she submitted, saying that they didn't find any serious violations of the academic code of conduct or plagiarism.

However, the university's decision drew a backlash from the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea (DPK).

DPK lawmaker Rep. Kang Min-jung said the university has given up its reputation as an academic institution, "I think Aug. 1, 2022, is the date when the university declared itself dead," she said on an YTN radio news show. "I think so because what the university did amounts to its giving up its basic duty as an academic institution… It seemed that the university had been struggling to make a decision on the matter as they were facing two choices: one to keep its honor as a university and the other to seek its own survival by siding with (the first lady.) I think they had someone they had to curry favor with."

Another DPK lawmaker, Rep. Jang Kyung-tae, criticized university's decision in a social media post: "Kookmin University's announcement to maintain that first lady Kim's academic papers (do not constitute plagiarism) is deplorable," he wrote. "I urge the university authorities to look back on what it did and reflect on if they still feel they made the right decision. I wonder if they still feel fine about the some 20,000 students attending the university and 113 alumni who took legal action against the case."

Kim, who received her doctorate from Kookmin University's Graduate School of Techno Design in 2008, has been accused of using text without attribution, which is considered plagiarism. Kim used paragraphs without quotation marks from an article published in March 2006, according to a media report, and several blog posts with few changes to the words.

Also, Kim's 2007 paper published in the Korea Design Forum journal, titled "Use satisfaction of users of online fortune contents and member Yuji by dissatisfaction and a study for withdrawal," has been coming under fire for its incomprehensible use of the Romanized Korean words, "member Yuji." It should have been translated as "A research paper on the satisfaction and dissatisfaction about online fortune teller sites and its impacts on subscriptions and cancellation of subscriptions."

Kookmin University said that Kim's papers contain some "shortcomings including English translations and quotations," which could make the papers look "inappropriate according to the current standards," but that these "insufficiencies" don't constitute plagiarism.

The university claimed that the decisions on whether the research work contains academic misconduct should be made based on the social standards and academic norms of the time ― in other words, 2008 ― at which time it claimed "there was no system for evaluating research ethics."

Regardless of the investigation results, Kookmin University said that a thorough investigation was not possible because the academic papers in question were all published before August 31, 2012 and the "statute of limitations of five years for verifying the papers has expired."