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The university entrance exam cheating case in Gwangju involving the use of cell phones has revealed itself as "corporate-style cheating" in which roles were highly systematized.
Gwangju Dongbu Police Station, which is investigating the case, said Monday, "The roles in this crime were divided into four levels -- those who organized the crime, students who provided answers, those who paid money to receive answers, and middle men outside the school who assisted in the operation." The crime was not a simple junior-senior affair as initially believed, but a very minutely organized caper.
According to police, the organizers collected from W100,000 to W1 million depending on roles, after which they utilized the funds on expenditures such as purchasing the cell phones, paying for the middle men, and other expenses. University students who were seniors of the high school students also took part. Police said 141 people have been implicated in the case so far, and of these, six high school students who led the operation have been arrested. This is the first case in which high school students have been arrested in connection with cheating on the university entrance exam.
Police said that if the 141 were broken down by role, 22 were organizers, 39 were high scoring-test takers, 42 were cheaters receiving test answers, and 37 were helpers (including seven university students). One university student lent his name so that a bank account could be opened.
The six students who had been arrested said, "In September, a group of 22 students from the same middle and high school conspired to commit the crime, after which roles were allotted and each person collected or agreed to collect W500,000 per two subjects."
Meanwhile, the Internet websites of city and provincial education offices were being flooded with tips concerning not only other instances of cheating by cell phone, but also instances where tests were taken by proxy. Accordingly, a nationwide investigation into similar cases has become unavoidable.
In fact, in a post uploaded onto the Gwangju Education Office homepage on Sunday entitled, "University Entrance Exam Cheating -- Not Just Cell Phones," it claimed that last year, someone asked through the Internet for a proxy to take the examination in his place. It also said that advertisements run by people offering to take the tests in return for large sums of money had been on several websites since late August.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Education and Human Resource Development is considering plans to extend the period in which those caught cheating on the university entrance exam are banned from retaking the test to three years. Until now, the only punishment given was to give the test taker a "0" on that year's test.
In a report to the National Assembly's Education Committee, the ministry said it would prepare by January a countermeasure plan to prevent cheating on the university entrance exam, including the measure stated above.
(Pak Jung-hyeon, jhpark@chosun.com )
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