Korea Times Responds to Fake Sex Offender Article

The Korea Times has come to the conclusion that they were had by the article that was published recently on their website that included a profile picture of a sex offender.  What I love about the apology is that it written by Oh Young-jin the paper’s chief editorial writer who uses the email addresses “foolsdie@gmail.com and foolsdie5@ktimes.com”.  It seems if you want people to take your paper seriously than using a professional email address would be a start.

We want to explain to our readers three “incidents” regarding articles published on our editorial pages and share our thoughts about them.

The three, in counter-chronological order, include a contributing article which an unidentified person submitted with the mug shot of a registered sex offender; a column with a touch of plagiarism; and a piece about East-West cultural differences. We don’t identify them to prevent copycatting of the first case and to protect their privacy for the second and third cases.

The bogus article was submitted to our paper’s longest-running series of essays that are open with few restrictions to people of all walks of life. This triggered many inquiries and tips from readers, prompting us first to take the photo off our website and then the article after it was obvious beyond any doubt that it was a practical joke.

First, we concluded it was beyond an apology and is inexcusable so we intend to take this occasion as a bitter lesson. As a result, we will double our vetting process and, if necessary, consider resorting to law enforcement authorities if this kind of prank takes place again. This is an effort to protect our paper’s integrity so as to live up to our stated mission of keeping our readers informed to the best of our ability. At the same time, we thank readers for reporting the bogus article to us and sharing their concern. [Korea Times]

You can read the rest at the link.