[Asia Economy Yang Nak-gyu, Military Specialist Reporter] On the 16th, the National Assembly's National Defense Committee held a confirmation hearing for Seo Wook, the nominee for Minister of National Defense, where the issue of plagiarism in his doctoral dissertation became a focal point.
According to Lee Chae-ik, a member of the People Power Party, Seo's doctoral dissertation in political science at Gyeongnam University, titled 'Alliance Models and South Korea's Operational Control Transfer Policy,' published in June 2015, was checked using the plagiarism detection program 'Copykiller,' which showed a plagiarism rate of 32%. Lee's office stated that generally, a plagiarism rate exceeding 30% in this program is considered clear plagiarism. Among the total 1,940 sentences in Seo's dissertation, 138 sentences had six identical words in a row, and 815 sentences were suspected of plagiarism, Lee analyzed.
Another member of the same party, Han Ki-ho, also claimed that Seo plagiarized from 98 different papers. Although citations were made in the dissertation, the content was copied verbatim from others' papers, including footnote summaries. In particular, it was confirmed that the content and footnotes of a 2008 paper on the Korea-US alliance published by the Korea Defense Research Institute were used identically.
The National Defense Committee plans to review whether to adopt the confirmation hearing report on Seo immediately after the hearing on the same day.
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