Plagiarism

Plagiarism (표절/剽竊) is considered academic dishonesty, a breach of journalistic ethics, and even torts to cause damage to other people.

Plagiarism is the wrongful appropriation and "purloining and publication of another author's language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions, and the representation of them as one's own original work. The idea remains problematic with unclear definitions and unclear rules. Plagiarism is subject to sanctions like expulsion.

Plagiarism is not a crime per se but in academia and industry it is a serious moral offence, and cases of plagiarism can constitute copyright infringement as explained below.

Plagiarism, as well as academic dishonesty in general, has increased over the past few years, decades, or century — depending on the academic penalties.

Key words
plagiarism, copyright infringement, academic dishonesty, fair use exemption, fixed in tangible form

Plagiarism v. Copyright Infringement
Plagiarism Checker.com explains: Plagiarism is using someone else's work without giving proper credit. Schools deal with plagiarism by giving the cheaters academic consequences - F grade for plagiarized work, and evem suspension for a certain period.

Plagiarism doesn't have to include copyright infringement. For example, William Shakespeare's plays are not copyrighted because they're too old. Even though it would technically be legal to copy from one of those plays for an English assignment, it would still be plagiarism if you didn't give credit to Shakespeare. Even though copying one sentence from a Web site is legal in terms of the copyright law, that may still count as plagiarism in schools and universities.

Copyright infringement is using someone else's work without getting the author's permission. The author of any original work, including books, essays, Web pages, songs, pictures, and videos, automatically gets the copyright to that work, even if he or she doesn't label it with the copyright symbol and her name. The work must be fixed in tangible form, which means it must be stored on something physical, such as paper, canvas, a CD, or a hard disk.

So it is illegal to copy large sections of someone else's copyrighted work without permission, even if you give the original author credit. Fortunately, a fair use exemption allows you to legally copy small amounts of someone else's work. Because of this, taking someone else's work and changing some of the words does not give you full ownership of the copyright. Instead of paraphrasing someone else's paper and calling it your own, it is advisable to learn from other people's work first and then write your own paper from scratch.

Between the consequences for plagiarism and copyright infringement, if you do need to use a few words from another source, take some precautions:
 * Put those words in quotation marks or indent them to indicate clearly that they are not your own words.
 * Add a footnote to give credit to the original author.
 * Keep the length of your quotation down to a few sentences so you won't be guilty of copyright infringement.

Making news in Korea
A wide range of social leaders from professors to politicians to pastors have been entangled in allegations of violating academic ethics since 2006.
 * In 2006, a professor-turned to Deputy Prime Minister for Education B.J. Kim failed to survive the Confirmation Hearings at the National Assembly for so-called "self-plagiarism" that he had not made sufficient notes for reference of his own theses in publshing other papers. Later he asserted innocence saying that he fell victim to organized anti-[[Impeachment|Roh Moo-hyun] sentiment of the then-opposition party and the press].
 * In 2011, Professor P.S. Lee, president of Korea University, had to step down on account of colleagues' accusation of plagiarism.
 * In 2012, Olympic gold medalist-turned lawmaker D.S. Moon was criticized for his alleged plagiarism in obtaining his Ph.D. degree from Kookmin University.
 * In February 2012, a professor of Seoul National University resigned for the first time on campus admitting plagiarism in his previous paper published before he joined the university.
 * In March 2013, celebrity instructor, cable TV host and education entrepreneur M.K. Kim added her name to a string of public figures accused of plagiarism. The 48-year-old talk show host under her name at tvN was alleged to have copied at least four papers by others for the master’s degree she earned from Ewha Women's University in 2007.
 * In March 2013, another newsbreaker was Pastor J.H. Oh of the famous big church in Seoul. Pastor Oh expressed the deepest apology to the church congregation for his plagiarism in publishing his Ph.D. in Theology thesis.

Experts concede that until recently, Korea’s academic society generally acted leniently on allegations of academic wrongdoing. It is true that Korean academic society had not applied strict standards on plagiarism because it has been busy importing and translating foreign theories into Korea.

As a matter of fact, enforcement of strict academic rules began in 2007 in response to complaints from foreign scholars about violations of their intellectual property rights in Korea. Since then, the Education Ministry set up a commission to address plagiarism and local universities have followed suit by establishing plagiarism disciplinary commissions.

In a sense, plagiarism scandals are a growing pain Korea is confronting as it makes the transition from the status of an “academic importer” to that of an “academic exporter and creator.” Now plagiarism is no longer “a customary practice” that should go unpunished here.