Korean Job Discussion Forums

[bassexpander]

From The Korea Herald

[DrunkenMaster]

They certainly have their work cut out for them.

[kermo]

Back at home, my friend was a TA, and saw the most hilarious attempts at plagiarism by Asian students who were either lazy or just in over their heads.

Lamest attempt: cutting and pasting an Encarta article

Dumbest attempt: trying to fake an Asian History essay by stealing a Rolling Stone article about the Woo Tang Clan, then stealing another essay and putting every eighth word into a thesaurus to avoid getting caught by a Google check, after being given a second chance to make up the essay

Worst excuse: "I was busy, so I asked my friend to do it for me, but I didn't know she would try to buy an essay!"

[newteacher]

But according to my ex plagiarism is just 'part of the culture' so there's really nothing wrong with it and there's nothing that needs to be changed or fixed.

[boyne11]

[iiicalypso]

I'm pretty sure they copied these guidelines from somewhere.

[Smee]

I'm fairly liberal when it comes to the concept of plagiarism and ownership of ideas. After all, learning a language is plagiarising, in that you learn and memorize a series of set phrases. Everything that can be said has been said before, and it's arrogant and huffy to copyright a turn of phrase.

The practice of plagiarism is another story, but it's so engrained here that it'll take more than vague guidelines to change it. It's disrespectful and it obviously diminishes research and critical thinking skills. Everybody has seen it here and back home, as Koreans (and Asians) really have no idea what academic/research writing is about. A recent example from here:

a bunch of my colleagues are working on their MAs through a local university. Apparently the policy is that it has to be written in both English and Korean. Well, only one of my colleagues speaks English---sort of speaks English---so the other teachers just gave her their abstracts and my coteacher translated them into English. Where do you draw the line with stuff like that? Moreover, she asked me to proofread them . . . to "just fix the grammar" . . . anybody who has ever had to proofread Korean writing knows that it's usually god-awful, and it never comes down to "fixing the grammar." Hell, look at government websites here, or look at stuff written on Korean history in academic journals . . . after a few words it's quite easy to tell that a Korean wrote it. Anyway, proofing Korean writing involves reorganizing the paper, providing details and supporting sentences, crafting a thesis, fixing collocations . . . and then "fixing the grammar." It's appropriation and pretty much the same thing as writing an entirely new paper. I refused to do it, though she couldn't understand why. So, just to recap . . . they're writing abstracts and dissertations in Korean, having them translated by someone else (who knows how much has been missed or changed in translation), then proofread and basically rewritten by a native speaker. So there are several thousand cases of plagiarism at the university level each year right there, to say nothing of the outright copying that goes on at every single level in every single station of life here.

[mistermasan]

back in uni one of my jobs was proof reading essays at the learning center. everyday i'd probably see about 30 asian kids per day. the amount of DUPLICATES was amazing. the girls would come in their little nation based cliques. they would all have the exact same essay. if the assignment was creative writing 101's "my first true love" they'd all have everything the same. there must be some guy named nick in macao who was a real lady killer way back. in just one day i read of 7 girl's undying love for him. i wonder if he s stil back by the ruins of that church waiting for her/them.

[OiGirl]

[idonojacs]

mistermasan

[Roch]

[Roch]

[thu_tinh]

when most Korean students go to Universities overseas do they often get dinged on plagiarism? Since it happens so much here in Korea, I was wondering if they pull the same stunt elsewhere?

[aarontendo]

We had a business research paper we had to work on a class, and all three of the students from China got busted for plagarism. One got expelled because it was his second offense.

[crusher_of_heads]