South Korean President Withdraws Minister Over Plagiarism

Earlier this week, South Korean President Lee Jae-myung announced that he was withdrawing the nomination of Lee Jin-sook, a professor and university president, whom he had selected to serve as his Education Minister.

In the 21 days since her nomination, nominee Lee has been subject to several scandals, including allegations of unlawfully sending her daughter to study abroad at an early age. In an interview, she acknowledged the issue but stated that she did not realize it was illegal.

However, the bigger issue was one of plagiarism. According to reports, some of her papers from her tenure as a professor contained plagiarized material. Lee denied this and said that the reports were based on a misunderstanding of “the realities of academia.”

According to President Lee, he decided to withdraw her nomination following “comprehensive reviews and consultations with leaders from both the ruling and opposition parties.”

Nominee Lee was the former president of Chungnam National University. She had served as a professor there since 2007. Her term as president of the school ended in February 2024.

The story is the second high-profile plagiarism scandal in the country this year. In January, the then-first lady Kim Keon-hee was accused of plagiarizing her master’s thesis. Since then, both her master’s degree and her doctorate have been revoked.

Her husband, Yoon Suk Yeol, was impeached by the country’s Constitutional Court in April 2025 following a scandal involving martial law and is currently being investigated for allegedly leading an insurrection. Lee Jae-myung was his successor.

This raises a simple question: Did nominee Lee commit plagiarism? Unfortunately, we don’t know the answer to that, but her response does raise some interesting points.

An Interesting Response

When addressing the allegations of plagiarism, Lee said that approximately 100 papers have been verified by the university to have a “plagiarism rate of less than 10%.”

She went on to add:

“The plagiarism detector increases the similarity rate every time similar materials overlap. Therefore, to obtain an accurate similarity rate, experts must exclude each one and test them accurately.”

She also addressed allegations that she had taken credit for her students’ work. She responded by saying:

“Therefore, thesis research often constitutes part of the research tasks performed by the supervising professor, and the first author should be determined considering the contributions between the supervising professor and graduate students, as specified in the guidelines of the research foundation.”

In both cases, Lee has a potential point. Regarding the first quote, she’s correct that plagiarism detectors only identify copied text, and it’s up to humans to determine what constitutes actual plagiarism. This task becomes increasingly difficult the older a work is, as more recent works will overlap with it.

We have seen numerous bad-faith plagiarism investigations accept any text match as evidence of wrongdoing. Although I am unsure if that is what happened here, it has occurred in other politically charged plagiarism cases.

As for her second point, she is correct that authorship can be very complicated when multiple people collaborate on a research paper. Determining who should be the first or primary author is often a fraught task. Disputes over this are not uncommon, and reasonable people can and do disagree.

While I don’t know if that’s what happened here, these are both valid points on their own. Whether they are valid in her case is the ultimate question.

The Continued Weaponization of Plagiarism

Regardless of the validity of the claims. It’s pretty clear why the allegations were made. The political situation in South Korea is, to put it mildly, heated. The martial law scandal and the impeachment of President Yoon have heightened sensitivities.

To make matters more complicated, President Yoon’s wife, Kim Keon-hee, also faced allegations of plagiarism. In her case, she lost both her master’s degree and her doctorate over a plagiarized thesis. However, that only came about after an investigation by Sookmyung Women’s University, which concluded recently.

The truth is that both of these allegations were motivated by politics. While that doesn’t mean the findings were invalid, it’s essential to understand the motivation behind these investigations and acknowledge that they may have prioritized harming opponents over protecting academic integrity.

Questions of plagiarism are complicated and nuanced. As Kim Keon-hee’s case showed, making a final determination can take months or years.

That said, the Minister of Education needs to be beyond reproach academically. This is especially true in the current climate in South Korea. Both scandals highlight potential issues that should have been identified and addressed before the nomination.

President Lee Jae-myung was likely wise to withdraw nominee Lee’s candidacy. Regardless of the seriousness of the allegations, they served as a distraction at a time when the country couldn’t afford one.

While it’s a setback for nominee Lee, if she’s cleared, she may be able to return later. However, now is not the time for such a case to unfold.

Bottom Line

It’s a simple truth that plagiarism is being weaponized, and that is not limited to the United States or Europe.

The best approach for politicians is to be proactive. Investigate candidates thoroughly, checking for plagiarism issues, even those that could be raised in bad faith, and include plagiarism investigations in any standard clearance process.

You have to assume that opponents will pore through any candidate’s academic output and find any potential plagiarism allegation they can hang their hat on. The goal isn’t to improve academic or research integrity; it’s to destroy those seen as the opposition.

Approaching it with that mindset requires a different perspective on the issues. Looking for actual problems isn’t enough. One has to look at it through the prism of an opponent hoping to find something, anything, in the record.

It doesn’t appear that happened here, and both President Lee and nominee Lee are paying for it. I hope that they learn the lesson when they choose their next nominee.