[Asia Economy Reporter Hwang Seoyul] The police have decided not to prosecute (no charges) the People Power Party lawmaker Jeong Gyeonghee, who was sued after raising allegations that one of the professors in the verification team for First Lady Kim Geon-hee's thesis had committed plagiarism.
On the 30th, the Yeongdeungpo Police Station in Seoul announced that it recently decided not to prosecute the case against lawmaker Jeong, who was sued for defamation by former Joongbu University professor Kim Kyung-han, a member of the National Verification Team. The National Verification Team is an academic group that concluded last September that the thesis written by First Lady Kim while attending the graduate school of Kookmin University was plagiarized.
Lawmaker Jeong was accused of spreading false information about Professor Kim. On October 3rd last year, a day before the National Assembly Education Committee’s audit, Jeong gave a media interview suggesting that there were suspicious signs of plagiarism in a past thesis by one of the experts in the verification team.
During the audit held on October 4th last year, Jeong also claimed that Professor Kim’s master's thesis had a plagiarism rate of 43%, exposing Kim’s real name, position, affiliation, and photo.
However, it was later confirmed that the thesis presented was by a namesake, not Professor Kim, and Jeong corrected this, and the article was deleted.
The police judged 'no charges' regarding the media interview, as it was difficult to prove that Jeong knowingly made the statement while aware that the author of the thesis suspected of plagiarism was a namesake, not Professor Kim.
Regarding the statements made during the audit, since they fall under 'official statements by a member of the National Assembly within the National Assembly,' they were handled as 'no prosecution' under parliamentary immunity.
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