Seoul court rules SNU professor's dismissal for plagiarism lawful

A Seoul court has ruled that Seoul National University (SNU) acted lawfully in dismissing a professor for plagiarizing other papers, even their own student's.

The Seoul Administrative Court ruled against a professor seeking to overturn the decision by the Appeals Commission for Educators to dismiss the professor from the university, according to legal sources on Monday.

The professor — who served as a full-time faculty member at SNU's Department of Korean Language and Literature since 2012 — was investigated for plagiarizing parts of an English abstract and several sentences from a paper written by a graduate school student, advised by the professor. 

A university research integrity committee, which included four scholars specializing in modern literature, concluded in April 2024 that four of the professor's 12 papers constituted research misconduct. Seven others papers amounted to improper research practices.

Under the university's research ethics guidelines, using two or more consecutive sentences from another person's work without citation is considered research misconduct. Using another person's sentences as though they are one's own is seen as improper research practice.

SNU dismissed the professor following deliberations by its faculty disciplinary committee. The professor sought a review of the dismissal, but the appeal was rejected, leading to the lawsuit.

"The sentences in the papers subject to disciplinary action are highly similar to those in the paper in comparison and contains numerous identical expressions, demonstrating redundancy and similarity beyond what would be seen as acceptable," the court said. More than half of the professor's English abstract was found to be similar to the paper in comparison.

"Given that such conduct was repeated, it is reasonable to view the professor's research misconduct was intentional," the court added.

The professor argued that a footnote — placed at the end of the last paragraph on page 185 of one of the papers under disciplinary review — broadly cited the paper in comparison as a source.  

However, the court rejected the claim, stating it is likely that people will understand the footnote to only apply to the final paragraph, rather than to all sentences on that page.  

The professor also argued that the statute of limitations for disciplinary action had expired for 11 papers under review. Despite the claim, the court ruled that the papers could still be considered as reference material in determining disciplinary action.  

"University professors are required to uphold a higher level of ethics and morality than others," the court said. "The dismissal doesn't go beyond the ethic's committee's discretion, and was imposed within the scope of disciplinary standards."

"Regulating research misconduct for the sake of academic and research development can't be considered less important than the disadvantages the professor can suffer from being dismissed," the court added.

This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.

BY KIM BO-REUM [[email protected]]