[updated: 05/12/2022] I see there now is a free "ezPDF Editor" (not 'reader') for personal use for Windows here: http://www.ezpdf.co.kr/main/downPage/downPage.jsp Just tried that but had some problems with it.
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Maybe 5 to 10% of doctoral dissertations (and some other documents) at Korean university archive websites or platforms such as RISS (http://www.riss.kr) are in .ezPDF format instead of Adobe PDF. The Korean-made software format .ezPDF allows authors to implement various levels of protection via “Digital rights management” (DRM) technologies. Typically, academic works in this format can be read using the free ezPDF Reader (http://m.unidocs.com), can be printed, but cannot be converted to other formats, and very often the reading period of downloaded ezPDF files is limited to 30 days! Note that there is now a free Mac "ezPDF Reader" available at the Apple App Store: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ezpdf-reader/id407445075?mt=8. If you need to consult/read an .ezPDF document for more than 30 days (not all files have that limitation though) and/or if you are a Mac user, there seems no “clean” way to convert these files into another format. But here is a work–around. Not a great solution, but in some cases you may want to go with it. Be warned, for documents with several hundred pages this may easily take 20+ minutes per document. Also, the converted document is roughly 10 x the size of the original one, as text is being converted into images (as is usually done with older documents that are scanned in order to create PDFs).
HOW-TO:
Under Windows (if on a Mac, then e.g. under an install in ‘VirtualBox’), when you are at e.g. the RISS website or another site providing .ezPDF files, or after you have opened a downloaded .ezPDF file to your desktop and opened it with the ezPDF Reader application, go to PRINT in that application or Web module. Now, as a printer driver (see images below), choose “Send to OneNote 2010” or “2016.” (If you did not install Microsoft’s OneNote, you can get the desktop version of it for free at https://www.onenote.com/download — no license and no account login required!) Now SAVE (resp. PRINT) the open file from the ezPDF Reader or its Web module. When done, you will see that OneNote has automatically opened (it might be hiding behind your open ezPDF Reader window). Choose any “insert” location in there and afterwards go to “File” / “Save as” and choose the “Section” you chose earlier and click on the “PDF” format, then SAVE it. You can also save it in MS Word format, if you prefer, works just as well, and seems to be much faster.
In case you are aware of a more elegant way to do this, please reply here. Thanks.
Frank
