Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Real Reality]

Minister Faces Plagiarism Accusations
A dissertation of Kim Byung-joon, Minister of Education and Human Resources Development, was found on Monday to be similar to a doctoral dissertation written by one of his students when he was a professor at Kookmin University. Minister Kim is accused of copying some details of a doctoral dissertation of his student, identified only as Shin.

Kim's thesis used the survey results of Shin's dissertation, which were obtained by interviewing 400 people in the four regions of Seoul in which reconstruction projects had been undergoing in September 1987. In addition, the titles of the two are almost identical except for a few words.

Five out of the 11 statistics tables in Shin's 140 page dissertation are identical or have a minor difference in some figures to those in Minister Kim's 15 page paper.
Donga.com (July 25, 2006)
http://english.donga.com/srv/service.php3?biid=2006072584658

[Guri Guy]

The irony of this is truly staggering.

[Real Reality]

Minister Admits Bungle: Kim Apologizes for Publishing Thesis Twice
Kim Byong-joon, deputy prime minister and minister of education and human resources development, on Thursday apologized for having published identical research papers in academic journals but denied the allegation that he stole part of the thesis of his student in publishing his paper.

According to the ministry, Kim, a former public administration professor, received 270 million won ($283,200) from the government together with two fellow professors for an educational project run from September in 2001 to August in 2002. The research team submitted 46 papers to academic journals over the next few years and Kim worked on eight of them. The minister acknowledged two of his six research papers were identical.

The GNP chief policymaker said allegations on Kim's plagiarism and thesis inflation are continuously erupting and those are serious matters for the education chief. "If the allegations are all true, he should voluntarily step down," she said.
By Park Chung-a, Korea Times (July 27, 2006)
http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/nation/200607/kt2006072717401711950.htm

[RACETRAITOR]

Meh, the premier of my province was caught plagiarising, and nothing ever happened to him. The fact that he was trying to get a degree while he was premier was telliㅜg though.

[Reflections]

[Woland]

[Hyeon Een]

Today's topic in one of my adult conversation classes today was "cheating".

One of the students relayed to me in broken Konglish that when he was taking an English Literature final test at this University that everyone in his class were so terrible at English that they spoke to the professor invigilating their exam (also their teacher) and he agreed to let them all cheat on the test so that they could pass. If he hadn't been such a 'good' teacher most of his class would have failed.

I also mark a lot of writing for 'real' University English classes. There is LOTS of plagiarism. It's particularly funny when they copy off of their friend, but include their friend's teachers comments in their submission. Or for their one paragraph homework they submit a perfectly written 2 page essay they just downloaded from the internet. I'm nicer to those downloading students however than the ones who just type something in Korean and use a translation website though. Those are mindboggingly bad. (Just as a taster: When you write 요 in Korean it gets translated as "bedspread". There are quite a lot of "bedspreads" in the homeworks I've received..) Totally incomprehensible.

[Juregen]

The reason Koreans cheat is mainly because they have a lot of social pressure to "succeed".

I even have kids as old as 7 years old trying to cheat, just to be a bit bettter then the rest. For them it is part of life i guess.

They will have to wake up to the intermational community or they will discredit themselves very fast in the international business/academic environment.

[Roch]