Sookmyung Women's University Amends Regulations for "Kim Keonhee Master's Degree Revocation"... Will Kookmin University Also Revoke Her Doctorate?

Sookmyung Women's University has completed the process of amending its academic regulations regarding "degree revocation." This revision is interpreted as being made with the potential revocation of First Lady Kim Keonhee's master's degree in mind.

Sookmyung Women's University campus.

On June 16, Sookmyung Women's University announced that the university council had passed the amendment to the academic regulations. The previous regulations allowed for the revocation of degrees obtained through fraudulent means. However, since these regulations were implemented in June 2015, they could not be applied to Mrs. Kim, who received her degree before that time.

This amendment introduces a retroactive provision, allowing the university to revoke degrees if serious and clear misconduct is discovered, even if such provisions did not exist at the time the degree was awarded. Following this amendment, Sookmyung Women's University plans to convene the Research Integrity Committee (Yeonjiniwi) to review the potential revocation of Mrs. Kim's degree. In January of this year, the committee concluded that Mrs. Kim's thesis constituted "plagiarism."

If Mrs. Kim's master's degree is revoked, it is expected that Kookmin University will also move to revoke her doctoral degree. Without a master's degree, she would not have met the qualifications to enter the doctoral program, leading to a natural process of revoking the doctoral degree as well. Mrs. Kim received her doctoral degree in 2008 from the Graduate School of Techno Design at Kookmin University with her dissertation titled "A Study on the Development of Fortune-Telling Content Using Avatars: Focusing on the Development and Market Application of 'Anita.'"

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