Lee Jin-sook "The actual author of the thesis is me"... Denies 'fragmentation suspicion'

[Financial News] Lee Jin-sook, Deputy Prime Minister for Social Affairs and Minister of Education candidate, officially denied allegations of thesis plagiarism and fragmentation on the 16th ahead of the personnel hearing.

According to the government on the 13th, the candidate's personnel hearing preparation team submitted 'reference materials related to the personnel hearing' to the National Assembly on the 7th.

After being nominated as a candidate on June 29, Lee was accused of plagiarism for allegedly hijacking a student's master's and doctoral theses and listing her name as the first author, as well as the so-called 'thesis fragmentation' or duplicate publication.

In this regard, Lee claimed in the reference materials that "the media claims that the similarity between the academic journal paper co-authored with student A and A's master's thesis is 43%, but the Korea Research Foundation's inspection results confirmed the similarity to be 13%, which can be considered a different paper."

She further stated, "Student A's master's thesis utilized a part of a national research project for which I am the research director," and "the actual author (first author) of the paper published in the academic journal is myself, who contributed significantly to the writing of the paper."

Regarding the fragmentation suspicion, she also denied it by stating, "The two papers have the same experimental design but were written based on results from experiments on different variables, making them different papers."

In addition, Lee attached a phrase from the Korea Research Foundation's integrated research ethics guide, stating, 'Even if it is one experiment, if the results and meanings are different, it can be considered as separate papers, and publishing in two academic journals is not unfair duplicate publication.'

Meanwhile, Lee also addressed the controversy over her demand to remove the Peace Statue during her tenure as president of Chungnam National University in 2022, saying, "It was an unavoidable procedure to prevent related issues in advance as it was installed without the consent of the manager according to the National Property Act," and "discussions were conducted through a consultative body between Chungnam National University and the 'Peace Statue Promotion Committee' at that time."

Furthermore, she expressed regret over the criticism of her passive involvement in the consultation process regarding the installation of the statue as the president at the time, but countered, "I find it difficult to agree with the criticism that I lacked historical awareness."


hsg@fnnews.com Han Seung-gon reporter