Plagiarism found in 1,500 college admission essays

By Jung Min-ho

Plagiarism was found in more than 1,500 college admission essays submitted last year, according to data released Sunday.

The Korean Council for University Education (KCUE) found 1,502 essays suspected of being plagiarized based on its database.

Among them, 173 were highly suspected as more than 30 percent of their texts matched the texts of documents in the database.

The KCUE created the database in 2012. It says the essays that show a material similarity of more than 5 percent are categorized as suspected plagiarism cases.

The data also showed that the number of suspected cases has not decreased in recent years ― 1,271 in 2014 and 1,364 in 2015.

But many believe the real number of such cases is far larger than that found. In is easy to find online agencies that blatantly offer ghostwriting services.

Many “writing experts,” who graduated from reputable schools, offer various services from consulting to ghostwriting for statements of purpose and personal history.

Some of the agencies advertise that their “personalized services” won’t be discovered by plagiarism detection systems.

Yet so far, the government and school officials have showed little interest in eliminating the culture of cheating, allowing such agencies to operate here legally.