Apology for Plagiarism

Dear editor,

I am sending this letter to express my disappointment with regards to a Seoul National University student, Koo Jung-eun, who plagiarized an article by Asad Zaman from the Jakarta Post.

I believe the correct step for any person caught in the wrong would be to apologize to those concerned (The Korea Times and Jakarta Post including Asad Zaman) by writing to The Korean Times apologizing for plagiarism.

I hope appropriate steps are taken to ensure that The Korea Times is never placed in this situation (questioning the validity and quality of the newspaper) and that the student involved learns the lesson that copying someone else's work is wrong.

Martin Sketchley martin.sketchley@wsikorea.com

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Seoul National University student Koo Jung-eun sent an apology email to us for her plagiarism. We have immediately taken out her Dec. 4 contributing article, ``From Rubble of Modernization: Choosing Our Paths to Progress," from our Web site.

We will seek ways of institutionalizing an automatic system to filter out such plagiarized contributing articles so as not to repeat the same mistake in the future.

This was the first time for us to publish a plagiarized contributing article. We have also expressed our sincere apologies to the Jakarta Post for this matter. We decided not to take legal action against the student as she promised not to make such a mistake again.

Korea Times