The confession and the method
The top-scoring candidate on South Korea's certified public accountant qualification exam has admitted to cheating during the tests. Han Won-seok, 34, explained the method in a video published on the YouTube channel of his lawyer, Lee Don-ho, as reported by The Korea Herald: using a mini-camera, he photographed the questions, sent the images to a generative artificial intelligence tool to obtain the answers, and checked them on his smartphone. According to his account, the technique was used in both exam sessions, in April and in July.
Han specified that he had also used the same system in the first test of the auditor exam, taken in March and not passed. In the video, he said he had submitted a written confession to the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency detailing what he had done, undertaking to hand over materials and devices to investigators in their original condition, and apologized for the harm caused. He did not provide further technical details, citing fear that others might imitate his method.
The figures that had raised suspicions
The Human Resources Development Service, which administers national qualification exams, indicated that two invigilators were present in the room where Han took the tests. The candidate was seated in the middle of the second row in the first test and in the middle of the first row in the second. According to the source, in the April session he scored 397.5 out of 400, correctly answering 159 of 160 multiple-choice questions, with full marks in three of the four subjects, including Introduction to Tax Law, where the candidates' average was 30.18 points.
Those unusually high results had indeed aroused suspicion among the other candidates, but Han had previously denied the fraud allegations. The matter then moved from discussion among examinees to a public confession and the opening of a case file.
The consequences and the open questions
The police received the written confession and launched an investigation. According to media reports, the body that administers the exam is considering filing a criminal complaint against Han. The Ministry of Economy and Finance, for its part, aims to suspend the validity of the qualification through the evaluation committee for the certified public accountant qualification established at the National Tax Service.
The law on the accountant exam provides that, in the event of confirmed fraud, the results are invalidated and the candidate is barred from the tests for five years from the date of the disciplinary measure. The timing and outcome of the proceedings remain to be verified: the investigation is at an early stage, and no formal charges or decisions by the body or the ministry have yet been reported. The material also does not clarify which artificial intelligence tools were used, how they were brought into the examination room, or whether the two invigilators noticed any anomalies during the tests.
