Misconduct inquiries in South Korea meant to be completed within months are taking years instead, according to data from the country’s primary agency for academic research.
Of the 83 misconduct cases the National Research Foundation has overseen since 2021, 49, including some still open, failed to reach a decision within the six-month deadline set by the Ministry of Education. Twenty two cases were open for longer than a year, and some had not progressed beyond the preliminary stages.
The foundation also wasn’t able to ascertain basic information for many cases. In more than half of all the cases, the agency couldn’t confirm when the preliminary inquiry began or ended. The politician who obtained the figures says the deadline has become meaningless and is calling for better oversight.
“Investigating rigorously and taking years to reach a conclusion are entirely different problems,” Kim Sunmin, a member of the country’s National Assembly and on the Science, Technology, Information, Broadcasting and Communications Committee, said in a statement to national media.
The National Research Foundation submitted the data, published by national media, in October to Kim’s office. Only 30 cases were handled within six months, Kim told Korean media, a statistic she said made the six-month rule “meaningless.” Neither the National Research Foundation nor Kim have responded to our requests for comment.
The longest completed investigation took 911 days, about 2.5 years, from the start of the preliminary inquiry to a decision. Investigators ultimately found no misconduct in the project, to develop an app for managing breast cancer symptoms with traditional Korean medicine, according to national media.
The foundation told ZDNet Korea inquiries take time because institutions seek opinions from outside experts and give the researchers a chance to respond.
One ongoing case into improper authorship has been in preliminary review for more than 1,000 days, a stage that is supposed to be completed within 30 days. Another, filed in May 2024, also alleges improper authorship and obstruction of a misconduct investigation, and has been pending for 854 days.
Improper authorship has been a persistent issue in South Korea, including by professors listing their children as coauthors to help them gain admission into universities. In 2019, a paper listing the high-school aged daughter of the justice minister was retracted after the journal found she made no intellectual contribution to the work.
“It is a serious problem that the specialized agency failed to properly manage even the start and completion dates while the preliminary investigation, which should have been completed within 30 days, dragged on for years,” Kim said in a statement.
She called to “urgently” shorten the investigation period, and called on the foundation to check delayed cases and why they have stalled.
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