A series of plagiarism scandals involving a top police officer, government official and church leader, has sounded alarms over the quality of higher education here. And there are now growing concerns that Koreans’ obsession with academic degrees may have gone overboard.

Huh Tae-yeol, presidential chief of staff, and police chief nominee Lee Sung-han last month publicly apologized for plagiarizing their doctoral dissertations.

Well-respected pastor Oh Jung-hyun of the SaRang Community Church has also recently come under fire over alleged plagiarism in his doctorate paper. 

The serious academic crime has also reached Korean professors. A Seoul National University professor offered his resignation after admitting to plagiarizing a foreign professor’s academic paper, and Song Hee-young, the president of Konkuk University, has also been accused of of copy-and-paste.

“I think the underlying problem is that many even high-profile people regard academic degrees as some form of a medal to boast,” said Kim Yer-su, a professor at Kyung Hee University.

Kim suggested the prevailing plagiarism culture may stem from the country’s misguided obsession over educational backgrounds.

People don’t feel guilty about practically copying others’ work for dissertations because they consider it a way to enhance their career, not to widen their knowledge, he explained.

“Unless we stop the obsession with academic degrees and start to educate students about the seriousness of plagiarism, people will continue to copy-and-paste from others’ work,” Kim added.

Experts also point out that the surge in the number of doctoral programs and degree seekers may have led to a drop in the quality of education at graduate schools.

According to data from the Korea Educational Development Institute, the number of students enrolled in doctoral programs here has nearly doubled over the past decade, from 13,310 in 2003 to 23,328 last year.

“The government should come up with measures to guarantee the school’s integrity in operating those programs such as strengthening criteria for their establishment and program management to prevent such side effects as dissertation plagiarism cases and to help students bear tangible fruits,” an official from the institution was quoted as saying by Yonhap News agency.

Observers agree that better education and good practice is essential to prevent plagiarism.

A graduate student, who is pursuing his master’s degree at Kyung Hee University, said that students seem to have a lack of understanding of plagiarism.

“When I was an undergraduate, I had no chance to learn about plagiarism. Although now when I have questions about writing an academic paper I can go to my personal tutor, there are still no classes or seminars about it,” he added.

Korea’s education system is now globally respected, but observers say it still, to some extent, has neglected to put an end to the copy-and-paste culture.

If one types in “daephil,” or “write-on-behalf” in Korean, for example, Korean portal Naver’s site churns out a list of at least a dozen companies. And one “daephil” firm’s site says it provides a “full-package dissertation service” from researching to writing the thesis, as well as adding footnotes.

In advanced countries like the U.K., universities consider plagiarism a serious academic crime, and try to provide essential education and training for students to discourage copying and pasting other people’s work.

“I had a three-hour class in the beginning of the semester to learn about citation in academic writing. It was a compulsory part of my degree program,” said Roh Sae-yeon, a Ph.D. student in business studies at Cardiff University.

“The school also showed us how it detects plagiarized dissertations by using a software program, and showed us the possible consequences after you are found to have plagiarized,” he added.

“There is also an extensive oral examination where you are expected to face internal and external questions about your dissertation. You wouldn’t be able to answer the questions, if you had copied another’s idea.”

Professor Kim of Kyung Hee University said education on plagiarism should start earlier.

“Since the development of the Internet, identifying original sources of information becomes much more difficult. I think we need to teach academic writing properly from a high school level,” he said.

As concerns over academic integrity grows, some call on the government and the schools to impose strict regulations about plagiarism.

So far several lawmakers including Moon Dae-sung, who has been accused of plagiarizing his 2007 doctoral dissertation, have retained their seats at the parliament in spite of their misconduct.

More recently, the presidential chief of staff Huh and Minister of Environment Yoon Seong-kyu, who both faced accusations of plagiarism, were named to lead the government with little trouble.

Also, according to data from the Ministry of Education, 83 professors were penalized for copying other work from 2008-2012. But only 20 of them had been dismissed or expelled from their schools, while the majority got away with verbal warnings or minor punishments.

Observers say it’s high time that universities really get serious about plagiarism and develop a system to detect and put an end to the copy-and-paste culture.

“One possible way is to use a software program to spot plagiarism in the students’ papers. The programs are quite commonly used in foreign universities,” Kim said, but added that it is “very time consuming and labor intensive” to run the software for all dissertations.

“One or two people can’t change the plagiarism culture. The whole society should understand and take plagiarism seriously, otherwise we can’t change it,” he added.

By Oh Kyu-wook (596story@heraldcorp.com)