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A student surfs the internet while others watch.
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Posted for free, essays often wind up sold by others for profit
Reports posted online by university students in cyber cafes are increasingly resurfacing on pay-for-download internet sites. Traded online by modern-day ’Bongi Kim Seon-dals,’ the reports are snatched up by students willing to pay in order to plagiarize others’ work. Bongi Kim-Seon-dal is a person who tries to earn money by cheating other people; the original Bongi sold water from the Daedong River as if he owned it. Chae Hye-mi, a 23-year-old student at Seoul National University, was recently looking for data at Internet sites selling reports when she found two of her own reports on the French artist Saint Orlan. She had originally placed the reports on a community study cafe, meant for free public consumption.The going rate for reports on pay sites is about 700 won (75 cents). Someone had easily made about 13,000 won using Chae’s reports. "I didn’t imagine there were people out there that would use my reports to make money," she said. "The money doesn’t matter, but it is really perplexing that such persons exist." A person with the online ID ’Gangbak Sarang’ posted a how-to guide for would-be collectors and sellers of student reports on an internet cafe for job-seekers. "Most reports on the internet are stolen," his post reads. "During the high-demand season, from April to June, when college students must turn in many reports, this business can bring especially high profit." Regarding this, pay-to-download online sites said that they are ’brokers’ and that those who place reports on the Internet sites should take responsibility for their writing being stolen. An official of one such pay-to-download site downplayed the problem, saying that "one out of about 100 reports is found to be a stolen one." According to Park Se-wan, 28, a Korea University student whose reports were traded at two pay sites, he "lodged a protest at one of the two sites, but they only deleted my reports without offering any compensation. I only heard from the site that I had made a protest ’too late.’ " Mr. Park’s reports were traded a total of 114 times on the two sites, and the confirmed amount of money involved in these cases was about 285,000 won. Mr. Park reported the situation to the police on July 11, but it is difficult to track down those that have posted stolen material on the sites because they use false names online. Currently, there are about 20 pay-to-download report sites, some of them holding more than 3 million reports.
