Stop academic plagiarism

The research ethics committee of Kookmin University in Seoul announced the preliminary results of an inspection Friday. It said, “A considerable portion of lawmaker-elect Moon Dae-sung’s dissertation for his doctorate is found to have been plagiarized.” Around that time, Moon said as he left the ruling Saenuri Party, “My case shouldn`t raise public distrust in politics or add to the burden on the Saenuri Party’s reform drive and the party staying in power.” How truly scary and sad to see endless greed and vulnerability in Moon, who won an Olympic gold medal in taekwondo and serves as a member of the International Olympic Committee. He has so easily dumped sportsmanship to seek a Ph.D. and professorship.

After analyzing his thesis April 2 ahead of the general elections, the Korea Progressive Academic Council said, “Moon should not only withdraw his candidacy, but also quit as a Dong-A University professor. Kookmin University should also immediately nullify his dissertation as well.” The extent of Moon`s plagiarism was so serious that the council demanded tough punishment for him. More than half of the content in his dissertation is exactly the same as a paper published by another professor. The abstract of his dissertation even has the same typographical errors as the original. If this is true, just how little of his dissertation he bothered to write would be interesting to know.

Another problem is that universities are not scrutinizing dissertations enough. Kookmin suffered massive embarrassment in 2006 when a paper written by then Education Minister Kim Byung-joon was found to have been plagiarized. Kim refused to resign for nine days by saying “It`s no big deal,” before quitting. The Education Ministry then ordered universities to prepare rules "to secure research ethics and truthfulness.” Kookmin failed to filter out plagiarism in Moon’s paper the following year in 2007. How lamentable and questionable that such practice is widespread in the academic community.

Using this as a turning point, the universities that awarded master`s degrees and Ph.ds to 129 lawmakers-elect in this year`s general elections must reexamine their decisions and thoroughly check for any plagiarism. Lawmakers-elect Chung Woo-taek of Saenuri and Chung Sye-kyun of the main opposition Democratic United Party are also suspected of plagiarizing dissertations. Preemptively verifying those dissertations en masse will help reduce political confrontations that are destructive at best instead of dealing with allegations of plagiarized papers written by the 129 lawmakers.