Theborn Korea was found to have plagiarized past articles and papers from the 2010s in the results report prepared at the request of the local government last year. Theborn Korea said it was a "clear mistake" and promised to prevent recurrence.
According to a report by ChosunBiz on the 10th, Theborn Food Industry Development Institute signed a contract with Jangjin County in Jeollanam-do last January for the operation service of the "6th Industry Activation Best Practices Survey Program," amounting to about 11.22 million won.
Theborn Food Industry Development Institute is a restaurant startup training institution created by Theborn Korea, with Paik Jong-won serving as its head.
At that time, Jangjin County entrusted the operation regarding the 6th industry to Theborn Food Industry Development Institute to explore ways to revitalize the area, including Jangjin-eup Market. The 6th industry is a model that creates added value by linking rural resources with agriculture, food, and specialty product manufacturing and processing (secondary industry) along with distribution, sales, experience, and tourism.
Theborn Food Industry Development Institute submitted a 43-page report titled "6th Industry Activation Best Practices Survey Program Operation Service" to Jangjin County after concluding a 3-night, 4-day field survey with local government officials.
The report included theoretical considerations and advanced cases from Japan. Excluding the cover, table of contents, and photographs, the body of the report was composed of 25 pages.
However, the section on "advanced cases from Japan" that should have been included in the field survey was filled with past papers. There are at least 13 passages that are suspected of being plagiarized in the sections on advanced cases, utilization plans, and implications.
This includes the unaltered content from the 2012 service report titled "6th Industry Activation Best Practices Survey Program" published by the Korea Rural Economic Institute (KREI), as well as from the 2013 work titled "Visiting Japan's Agricultural 6th Industry Sites" by the Chungnam Agricultural 6th Industry Center.
For example, the report features the 'antenna shop' as a Japanese case of a strategic store. This part is virtually identical to the content included in the 2014 study by the Chungnam Development Institute titled "Analysis of Japan's 6th Industry Policy and Current Situation."
The report included the excerpt, "Antenna shops play various roles, from selling and promoting agricultural and marine products produced in the region to identifying changes in consumer needs and providing information on tourism and rural exchanges."
Additionally, the report used content from the website operated by the Japan Regional Tourism Association and articles related to the 6th industry containing reviews from a broadcasting station's coverage in 2019 without any modifications to expressions, spacing, or the arrangement of words. Expressions and sentences that appeared in local newspapers, specialized journals, and personal blogs were also used verbatim.
Theborn Korea stated, "It is clearly our mistake."
A representative of Theborn Korea noted that the employee who wrote the report has since left the company and acknowledged that they failed to indicate sources while citing articles or papers. To prevent repeating the same mistakes in upcoming reports, they have provided training on writing methods and established procedures for recurrence prevention during the recent organizational restructuring.
A representative from Jangjin County stated, "We commissioned the service from the perspective of regional revitalization, and we plan to pursue related projects around the second half of this year."