Price of a perfect score
2026.01.15 15:16
From six-figure payments to prison sentences, two cases reveal high cost of Korea's score obsession
| A mother who has later sentenced for stealing tests from her daughter's school enters a court in Daegu for an interrogation before arrest on July 15, 2025. (Newsis) |
In South Korea's hypercompetitive education system, a single exam question can carry a six-figure price tag or a prison sentence.
Two recent criminal cases, one involving elite private instructors paying vast sums for test questions and another ending with a mother getting jail time for stealing school exam papers, illustrate how academic assessments are increasingly treated as commodities in a society where test scores can shape futures.
Prosecutors last month indicted some of the country's most prominent private academy instructors on charges of illegally purchasing college entrance exam prep questions from current teachers.
According to the indictment, a well-known mathematics instructor, Hyun Woo-jin, sent nearly 180 million won ($122,000) to a single public school teacher over several years in exchange for test questions. Other teachers reportedly received tens of millions of won through dozens of transactions, including payments routed through a spouse's bank account.
In a similar arrangement, a star English instructor, Cho Jung-sik, was accused of directing a publishing company employee to obtain exam questions from current teachers for use in private teaching materials.
Prosecutors said teachers were paid more than 80 million won in total for producing questions, while unpublished government exam-prep materials were allegedly obtained in advance through an incumbent teacher.
The transactions violated South Korea's antigraft law, which strictly limits monetary exchanges involving teachers, regardless of whether the material is directly linked to official exams.
Prosecutors indicted 46 people in total, including private education company officials and current and former teachers, describing the case as a systematic commercialization of test questions within the shadow economy of private education.
The obsession took a darker turn in a separate case that concluded this week, when a court handed down prison time to a parent and a temporary teacher who repeatedly broke into a high school to steal exam papers.
The court found that a mother, working with a contracted teacher at her daughter's school, illegally entered the faculty office on multiple occasions over several years to obtain test papers ahead of exams.
A school administrative official was also convicted of facilitating the crime by disabling security systems and manipulating security camera footage.
The stolen exam papers allowed the student to memorize questions and answers in advance. She ranked first in her class throughout her high school years, investigators said, and even participated directly in one of the break-ins. The scheme collapsed only after a security malfunction triggered an investigation.
The court sentenced the mother to 4 1/2 years in prison and the teacher to five years, calling the crimes "extremely grave" and saying they fundamentally undermined trust in public education.
While the student received a suspended sentence, the ruling emphasized the broader harm inflicted on other students competing honestly in a high-pressure system.
Education experts say the two cases reflect different ends of the same phenomenon, driven by an entrenched fixation on exam results.
"Together, the two cases expose different ends of the same spectrum, both driven by the obsession for perfect scores," said Bae Sang-hoon, an education professor at Sungkyunkwan University.
"Whether through covert payments or outright theft, exam questions were treated not as tools of assessment but as leverage, objects to be bought, stolen or exploited in the race for higher scores," Bae said.
Experts have long warned that Korea's exam-centered culture incentivizes unethical behavior, while only increasing inequality between students who can afford private education advantages and those who cannot, raising broader questions about fairness and trust in the public education system.
저작권 보호를 위해 본문의 일부만 표시됩니다.
원문 보기 →댓글 (0)
첫 번째 댓글을 작성해보세요!
test의 다른 소식
China sells salmon raised in Yellow Sea structures, raising concerns about their possible dismantlement
0
모든 소식을 불러왔습니다