Coffee Prince Author Admits to Plagiarizing

 

From asianoffbeat.com: 

Her plagiarism became an issue when some literature fans raised suspicions that parts of her Sad Story of the Capital resemble that of Jo’s epic novel “Taebaek Sanmaek.” In her novel talking about life in Seoul in 1930, there are several phrases that are identical to that of Jo’s novel talking about life in 1948-1953. Indeed, among several paragraphs, only five to six words were different.

Lee explained that her piece was originally meant for fun, not commercial use. She used pieces of stories on an online community in 1999 where amateur writers exchanged their romance stories and commented on each other.

“I was overwhelmed by the popularity and was in a hurry and mixed information and references with my pieces. Also, I regret not having been fully aware of copyright when I wrote it,” she admitted.

 I am shocked and disappointed by this. I read translations of the Coffee Prince novel so I don’t really know how good of a novelist she is but I did like the screenwriting she did on Coffee Prince. The pacing of the story was excellent and if the writing was bad Coffee Prince would have been a horrible drama. Thankfully she admitted to her plagiarism (I’m sure she had no choice). Their has been an on going discussion about copyrighting and the internet in Korea. South Korea is the most internet connected country in the world and there are so many stories of people coming out of no where and becoming hits for their online stories. Like My Sassy Girl, the movie is based on a bloggers stories about his girlfriend.

Lee Sun Mi’s career hasn’t suffered much. She is currently developing another drama with Coffee Prince PD, Lee Yoon Jung (I love her!!) and as far as I know she has only gotten a slap on the wrist after confessing to her plagiarism.