Two Students of Proxy Exam, a “Three Year Combo”

It has been discovered that an expelled student of S Girls University in Seoul, K (23 years old, office worker), who was convicted for taking this year’s university entrance exam for third time examinee J (20 years old) in Gwangju, has actually done this since 2002.

On top of the mass cell phone cheating of the students, the fact that K took the exam as a substitute three times, and with the previous two times resulting in no problems, brought about criticism over the Scholastic Aptitude Test’s management and supervision.

According to Gwangju Nambu Police Station, K and J met on an Internet chatting site around October 2002. J, who was in her final year of high school, assumed that K, who was expelled in August that year, was a university student. After getting close, J pleaded K to take the test for her in exchange for some money.

Afterwards, J handed over 1,000,000 won to K in a motel in Baekwun, Gwangju on November 4, a day before the CSAT, and sent money through the account for four months, totalling 6,000,000 won.

K took the exam at J Girls’ High School in Gwangju, but as the score was much less than expected (310 points), J failed to enter a university.

Still believing K to be a university student, J again gave 6,500,000 won to K last year to take the exam for her and succeeded in entering a college in Gwangju.

However, as J wished to enter Seoul S University’s business department, she was not content and so she quit her school and once again gave K 6,290,000 won this year to take the test, only to be caught. J was actually a third time examinee.

K from Ulsan lived there until she graduated from high school. In 2001, she entered S Women’s University in Seoul but was expelled because she could not pay the fee due to her family’s poor financial condition.

The police arrested J yesterday for interruption of public affairs by deception and filed for a warrant for K for the same conviction.

Police explained that the reason why J, who could not get the scores she desired, asked K to take her exam for three years is because she believed K to be a politics and law student of a famous university.

J, still believing K to be a student at the time of her arrest, said, “K scored 374 on her SAT and succeeded in taking a proxy exam before. As we got close personally, I thought she was most trustworthy.”

Furthermore, J, to accumulate 6,000,000 won this year, lied to her parents that she was still attending school and saved all her school fees. The money from last year and the year before came from academy fees, allowances, and part time job payments that she received.

According to the police, K, a contract employee of S company, lived in a one room place in Yongsan, Seoul with her little brother.

Despite J and K’s close relationship, it still is a mystery why J asked K to take her exam for three years when K could not provide her the score of her wish.

Also, according to K’s Internet homepage, she has been on quite a few holidays to foreign countries, and although she makes only 1,200,000 won a month, she is a worker in famous semiconductor firm and so the fact that she took the exam just due to daily living difficulties does not make sense.

Therefore, the police is planning on investigating K’s bank account and the phone call lists of K and J to see if there was a third person or an outside broker.

Yang-Hwan Jung ray@donga.com