Insufferable Moon a disgrace

By Jung Min-ho

Moon Dae-sung has been cast down from a Korean hero to a national disgrace, but the enormous personal shame has yet to affect his public standing.

The 37-year-old Incheon native with movie star looks once embodied everything an athlete could possibly wish for ― fame, fortune and adoring fans. This was after he won a taekwondo gold medal at the 2004 Athens Olympics via a flurry of knockouts, a rare display of dominance in a combat sport often accused of lacking excitement.

Moon was intent on milking every ounce of his Olympic glory for greater worldly gains. In 2008, he became the first Asian member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Athletes Commission. In 2012, he became a lawmaker for President Park Geun-hye’s Saenuri Party.

In 2014, Moon is seen kicking and screaming amidst a dramatic fall from grace. Following a two-year investigation, Seoul’s Kookmin University canceled his Ph.D. in sports psychology last month because it found Moon’s thesis was a product of plagiarism.

Now, Moon is not the first high-profile Korean who cut-and-pasted their way toward undeserved academic credentials and social respect. But it is hard to remember any of the cheaters being insufferable as "Moondoricoh’’ ― a nickname coined after the popular Sindo-Ricoh copy machine ― who continues to test the public’s patience with his bald-faced lies and unrepentant attitude.

Talking to “Around the Rings,” an Internet publication based in Atlanta on Monday, Moon said, “As an Olympian and gold medalist you know that I am a fighter. I never give up.”

According to the media outlet, the IOC recently reconvened its ethics committee, which it closed in December due to the lack of a conclusive statement from Kookmin, to conclude the case after receiving the school’s investigation report on Moon’s paper last month.

With the IOC moving to revisit his case, Moon moved swiftly by suing Kookmin University over the canceled doctorate. No one expects Moon’s case to stand up in court, not when he or one of his hapless assistants had copied even the factual errors and misspellings of the study they were stealing from. However, the legal action may earn Moon enough time to protect his status as an IOC member, which is to continue until 2016.

“My dissertation is not a case of plagiarism, and I cannot accept the university’s final decision due to its lack of fairness in judgment or validity,” Moon said, claiming that Kookmin’s investigation was “politically motivated and strongly biased.”

Moon calls himself a fighter. He looks more like a cowardly cheap shot artist.

It is unclear whether the lawsuit will cause the IOC ethics committee to put the case on hold again. If it does, or has, the IOC is also responsible for ignoring its own principles of the Olympic spirit, which refer to a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play.

Moon’s plagiarism has nothing to do with ideology; media from both left and right criticize his wrongdoing. It is about justice.

Under former President Jacques Rogge, the IOC worked hard to improve its old reputation as a murky, corrupt and ineffective organization. New IOC leader Thomas Bach needs to take the necessary action to keep the momentum for reform.

Otherwise, the IOC may face consequences in years to come.