Tag: Kim Keon-hee

At this point it is pretty clear that the first lady did rely on plagiarism for her Phd dissertation, but I don’t know what this group is hoping to accomplish that hasn’t already been done. She has already been mocked & shamed publicly and she apologized for her actions:

First lady Kim Keon-hee has come under fire again, as a group of professors has reignited the allegations that she plagiarized her Ph.D. dissertation and other published papers. She had been cleared of the allegations last month following an eight-month probe by her alma mater, Kookmin University, which stated ultimately that the “statute of limitations of five years for verifying the papers has expired.”

The group of 16 professors from 14 academic associations, called the Pan-academic National Verification Group for the Verification of Suspicions of Plagiarism of First Lady Kim Keon-hee, held a press conference to unveil their findings verifying Kim’s academic misconduct at the Press Center in Seoul, Tuesday. The group claimed that all of Kim’s academic works are “indisputably entangled with plagiarism,” and that they all violate basic academic standards. 

According to the group’s findings, a total of 220 out of the 860 sentences in Kim’s Ph.D. dissertation that she produced when she attended Kookmin University’s Graduate School of Techno Design in 2008 were copied and pasted without citing the original sources.

Korea Times

Here appears to be the real reason this group has been formed:

Meanwhile, the ruling People Power Party (PPP) questioned the credibility of the Pan-academic National Verification Group’s findings, claiming that the group supports the DPK and has political intentions.

“As the group’s name may suggest, the verification group pretends to make a scholastic presentation on behalf of the academic community … However, the bottom line is that it is merely a political organization that supports DPK leader Lee Jae-myung,” PPP spokesperson Rep. Park Jung-ha commented on the PPP’s website, Tuesday.

Park said that some of the 14 academic associations that are part of the organization had openly supported Lee during the presidential campaign earlier in March and called on them to “stop deceiving people under the pretext of academic investigation.”

You can read more at the link, but this appears to all just be in retaliation for the ongoing investigation into Lee Jae-myung’s wife.

This makes me wonder what the investigation would have determined if President Yoon had lost the election:

 A university on Monday cleared First Lady Kim Keon-hee of plagiarism after a monthslong probe into in her academic papers.

Kookmin University in Seoul conducted an investigation into Kim’s four research papers over allegations of misconduct raised last year. 

Kim earned her PhD in design at the university in 2008.

The university said its investigating committee concluded her doctoral dissertation and two other papers “constitute neither plagiarism nor research misconduct that seriously deviates from the range normally accepted in the academic disciplines.” 

As for the remaining paper, it was impossible to verify whether there had been misconduct, the school said.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

I guess animal rights is a pretty safe issue for the highly criticized first lady to come out in public in support of:

First lady Kim Keon-hee called for animal rights in her first media interview given since her husband, President Yoon Suk-yeol, took office on May 10. 

“Korea and China are the only two economically successful countries that consume dog meat,” Kim said during an interview with local newspaper Seoul Shinmun that was published on Monday. “I believe the universal culture (of not consuming dog meat) should be shared in Korea with other developed countries. Otherwise, it could stoke an anti-Korean sentiment,” Kim said. 

To end the practice, Kim said the government could support dog meat traders to transition into new industries, underlining the unsanitary environment in which dogs are raised before being consumed as meat.

“Dog meat is not good for health. Dogs that are raised to be consumed as meat are locked in small cages, where they eat, sleep and defecate all their lives. And some of them are even fed antibiotics,” Kim said. “Ultimately, dog meat consumption must be stopped out of respect for man’s best friend and life.”

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

Here is the latest attempt to bring down Yoon Suk-yeol’s campaign through criticisms of his wife:

The latest fodder emerged Sunday during MBC TV’s airing of recordings of phone calls between Yoon’s wife, Kim Keon-hee, and a reporter for a liberal YouTube channel, in which Kim claimed she was a “spiritual” person who preferred discussing the meaning of life with “dosas,” or gurus, to visiting nightclubs.

Kim’s remark received attention because she has previously been reported to have close ties to shamanism and introduced certain shamans to her husband.

Then, local newspaper Segye Times reported Monday that a shaman introduced by Kim has been exercising undue influence over Yoon’s campaign while working as an adviser for a subunit named “Network Headquarters.”

The PPP scrambled to dispel the allegations, saying the person in question is not a shaman but a Buddhist figure who has made several visits to the campaign but has never been appointed an adviser nor had any sway in the campaign.

On Tuesday, the party announced the dissolution of the Network Headquarters, saying the decision was made by Yoon.

When asked to address the claims, Yoon expressed disbelief.

“I was introduced to him by a party official and we introduced ourselves, but I know him to be a monk,” the candidate told reporters Monday. “I saw the article about (him being involved in) my schedule and public messaging, but it’s a truly absurd story.”

Yoon’s opponents have likened his wife to Choi Soon-sil, a confidante of former conservative President Park Geun-hye, who was also accused of having ties to shamanism and running state affairs from behind the scenes.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but the comparison to Choi Soon-sil is ridiculous when Choi was essentially a lobbyist collecting money from Samsung for her sports foundation in return for influence over then President Park. The shamanism claims was just sensationalism added to the story by the media. What is going on now with the claims against the Yoon campaign is likely the same thing. With that said his Kim Keon-hee needs to be careful what she says to the media because they will use anything she says in or out of context to damage her husband’s campaign.