The confession
The top scorer on South Korea's certified public accountant licensing exam has turned himself in to police and admitted to using artificial intelligence to cheat. The Korea Herald reports it. Han Won-seok, 34, confessed in a video published Sunday on his lawyer Lee Don-ho's YouTube channel. In the video, with his face partly covered by a mask, the man said he had submitted a written confession to the Seoul Metropolitan Police containing a full account of the facts and that he sincerely apologizes for the harm caused to many people.
According to the account reconstructed in the confession, the method consisted of photographing the exam questions with a microcamera, sending them to an artificial intelligence tool and checking the answers on a smartphone. Han admitted using the same system in the first round of the official statutory auditor examination, held in March.
Record scores and suspicions
The results previously made public had fueled suspicions. In an article in the Tax and Finance Newspaper about his preparation, Han said he had scored 397.5 points out of 400 in the first round of the 63rd session of the exam, correctly answering 159 out of 160 multiple-choice questions. He had achieved a perfect score in three of the four subjects—introductory tax law, introductory accounting and commercial law—and 97.5 in public finance.
The evaluation statistics of the Human Resources Development Service cited by the source indicate that in introductory tax law, the subject on which attention had focused, the average for the 16,856 candidates was only 30.18 points and about 74.21 percent fell below 40 points, the minimum threshold to avoid failing the subject. Han had also ranked first in the second-round written test, with an average of 82.87 out of 100 against a passing threshold of 49.75.
The rules allow 80 minutes to answer 80 questions in two subjects per session, about one minute per question including the time to mark the answers. The combination of anomalous scores and such tight time limits had aroused the suspicions of other candidates. In a previous interview, Han had denied the accusations, claiming he was an ordinary student and did not understand why his results should raise such suspicions.
Investigations and consequences
The confession came after government authorities and professional organizations had launched checks into the allegations. The source reports that on Friday Prime Minister Han Seong-sook announced a zero-tolerance approach to exam fraud, citing the recent allegations, and that the Korean Association of Certified Public Accountants had asked the competent authorities to investigate.
Some aspects remain unclear. The material does not specify which offenses are alleged or what disciplinary or criminal consequences Han could face, whose qualification and results do not appear to have been formally annulled. It also does not indicate whether other candidates are under investigation. The exam had 722 successful candidates out of 6,606 participants in the second round, with a pass rate of 10.92 percent.
