Park Sunae Banned from Submission Due to Duplicate Publication of Paper... "Result of Voluntary Withdrawal"

MBC Straight Report Rebuttal
"Deputy Prime Minister Will Take Legal Action Personally"

[Image source=Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Han Jinju] The Ministry of Education explained that the disciplinary action of submission ban against Deputy Prime Minister for Social Affairs and Minister of Education Park Soon-ae for duplicate publication of a paper from 11 years ago was due to "voluntary withdrawal."

MBC's 'Straight' reported that the Korean Association for Public Administration's English journal 'International Review of Public Administration' (IRPA) issued a submission ban on Deputy Minister Park until August 2013. The announcement stated that a paper submitted by Park in 1999 was canceled because it overlapped significantly with another paper she had written.

According to MBC's report, Deputy Minister Park's paper dealt with transportation policy, and although the titles differed from the previous paper, most of the main text was similar.

The Ministry of Education stated, "Regarding the transportation-related paper in the International Review of Public Administration (IRPA), at the time of IRPA publication, Deputy Minister Park was back in Korea and was unaware of the 1999 U.S. paper. After recognizing that the U.S. paper had been published in a journal, Deputy Minister Park herself requested to withdraw the paper. The voluntary withdrawal was a measure taken upon realizing this fact during the process of reviewing her own research work and to comply with research ethics."

Earlier, on the 6th of last month, the Ministry of Education also explained that when allegations of duplicate publication were raised based on a paper published in December 2001 in the Journal of Urban Administration being previously published in November 2000 in Yonsei Social Science Research, there had been no duplicate publication or submission ban disciplinary action.

Regarding reports that Deputy Minister Park received editing services for her son's school records at an admissions consulting academy in 2018 to prepare for college entrance, the Ministry of Education also denied the claims. MBC reported that one of the twin sons was admitted to Korea University through the comprehensive student record screening, while the other son retook the exam and was admitted to a regional medical school through regular admissions. The academy's representative was reportedly arrested in 2019 following a police investigation on charges including ghostwriting and fabrication, according to MBC.

The Ministry of Education stated, "Deputy Minister Park's younger son received a self-introduction letter consulting session costing around 200,000 won per session once during his senior year in 2018, and this is unrelated to the 2019 police investigation and accusation against the academy. We express regret over this report, which could seriously damage the individual's reputation, and plan to consider legal action against the distorted report."

At the regular briefing that day, the Ministry of Education said regarding the report, "(The Deputy Minister) has decided to take legal action."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.