The Korea Now Podcast #122 – Robert Winstanley-Chesters – ‘The Armstrong Affair and Questions of Authorship in Korean Studies’

This episode of the Korea Now podcast features an interview that Jed Lea-Henry conducted with Robert Winstanley-Chesters. They speak about the plagiarism scandal that surrounded Charles Armstrong and his book ‘Tyranny of the Weak’, the nature of the plagiarism and academic corruption involved, the extraordinarily immoral response from much of the Korean Studies community who chose to defend Armstrong and publicly attack the people making the allegations, the history of such behaviour within the Korean Studies community, as well as deeper questions concerning authorship, co-production, authenticity, intellectual ownership, provenance, truth and objectivity.

Robert Winstanley-Chesters is a human geographer, Lecturer at University of Leeds and Bath Spa University, a Teaching Fellow at the University of Edinburgh, and Member of Wolfson College, Oxford, formerly of Birkbeck, University of London, Australian National University and Cambridge University. He is author of “Environment, Politics and Ideology in North Korea” (Lexington, 2014), “Vibrant Matters(s): Fish, Fishing and Community in North Korea and Neighbours” (Springer, 2019) and "New Goddess of Mt Paektu: Myth and Transformation in North Korean Landscape” (Black Halo/Amazon KDP 2020). You can follow Robert’s academic work at: https://anu-au.academia.edu/RobertWinstanleyChesters and Robert Winstanley-Chesters (researchgate.net)

* Robert’s article on which this is interview based is: ‘Authorship, Co-Production, Plagiarism: Issues of Origin and Provenance in the Korean Studies Community’ Authorship, Co-Production, Plagiarism: Issues of Origin and Provenance in the Korean Studies Community | Robert Winstanley-Chesters - Academia.edu

* The paper by Robert Winstanley-Chesters 'Authorship, Co-Production, Plagiarism: Issues of Origin and Provenance in the Korean Studies Community' is part of a writing and research project led by Professor Vladimir Tikhonov of the University of Oslo and Associate Professor Adam Bohnet of the University of Western Ontario titled 'Unpicking the Hegemonic Threads in the Production of Korean Studies in English: Eurocentrism, Cold War Logics and Questions of Authorship.' This project based at the University of Oslo, in Norway has engaged in a series of workshops and writing sessions between 2019 and 2022 funded by the Academy of Korean Studies 2020 Korean Studies Grant program (AKS-2020-C-16) and the project is grateful for their generous support.

Other materials referenced in the interview:

*** Revoking a Recommendation by B.R. Myers Revoking a Recommendation — B.R. Myers – Sthele Press

*** On Academic Ward Bosses by B.R. Myers On Academic Ward Bosses — B.R. Myers – Sthele Press

*** Table of 98 Examples of Source Fabrication, Plagiarism, and Text-Citation Disconnects in Charles K. Armstrong’s Tyranny of the Weak (2013) Tyranny-of-the-Weak_Table-of-98-Cases.pdf (sthelepress.com)