Additional Investigations of 1,625 Cheating Suspects

The police extended investigations on mobile phone messages regarding the cheating incidents on the recent College Scholastic Ability Test, and announced an expansion of inquiries into the proxy exams.

The additional offenders are projected to number in the hundreds.

The police posited its focus on dispelling all doubts of cheating without being limited to the upcoming college entrance schedules, including the reporting date of test results set by the educational authorities.

Expanding the Breadth of Investigations-

Kim Young-tae, head of the Intelligence Crime Investigations Unit of the police force, stated on December 6, “According to a thorough review of 20,703 messages composed of codes and numbers, as submitted by the three telecommunications companies, in addition to the 260,000 messages submitted earlier, we have uncovered 1,625 additional suspects.”

The police will apprehend the suspects at their respective district police agencies, after confirming the personal information of mobile phone users through the telecommunications companies.

Kang Hee-rak, director of Investigations at the police force, stated, “We sent a formal request for aid to the Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development, after reviewing the application forms submitted by the current students and test re-takers at each respective high school,” and “we will follow through with investigations, should the Ministry of Education choose to pursue this course.”

Earlier, the police had confirmed five cases and 11 proxy exam suspects, after reviewing 28,000 application forms of test re-takers with the photos on the residence ID cards.

Commenting on last year’s proxy exams, Director Kang further stated, “We will only launch into investigations when requests are made, as it would be difficult to ensure fairness during full-scale investigations because different education centers each have differing methods in storing the application forms.”

Detailed Reports on Investigations-

The police re-launched detailed investigations, as a number of phone logs were found to have been omitted from the investigations involving 260,000 numbered mobile phone messages.

The renewed investigations will involve text messages with three or more matching numbers out of six, instead of the previous standard of four or more.

The police set aside 396 suspects for questioning by pursuing similar methods of 20,700 messages composed of special codes and numbers as obtained by the telecommunication companies.

Messages including “text+number” and “odd number of text+number” were confirmed, as KTF and LG Telecom messages usually store up to 40 letters. It is harder to identify cheating cases for SK Telecom messages, as only three text and six numbers are stored in the system.

A police source stated, “For SK Telecom members, we will determine their involvement by locating the cell phone positions and reconstructing the message used at the time.”

Outlook-

The police are expecting a large number of cheating suspects by scrutinizing the “code+ number” text messages. Investigation results involving proxy exam takers or a reassembling of numbered messages, however, are not expected to yield high results.

More suspects are expected to be uncovered, as police entered into investigations involving novel methods of cheating such as the web-to-phone method illustrated in the case of the “Cheongju academy director.”

The police stated, “We will not be limited by the Ministry of Education’s score reporting deadline (December 14), as our primary focus is to dispel all doubts on the cheating cases,” intimating that the period of investigations are predicted to be lengthy.