Korean Job Discussion Forums

[garykasparov]

http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/NEWKHSITE/data/html_dir/2007/11/12/200711120039.asp

Hagwon officials face arrest




Police yesterday sought the arrest of three people on charges of leaking entrance exam questions to an elite high school.

According to the National Police Agency, about half of the questions at Gimpo Foreign Language High School in Gyeonggi Province were disseminated before the exam was taken on Oct. 30.

Police have put a school official on the wanted list, and asked a court to issue arrest warrants for two officials at the cram school in Mok-dong, Seoul. Police will examine the e-mail and bank account records of the suspects to find out whether any money was exchanged.

The incident occurred as the government is tightening its regulations on specialty high schools. Those schools which focus on science and foreign languages have been criticized for deviating from their purported specialties, and only serving the demands of parents - namely, to better prepare students for college entrance exams.

About 2,400 applicants took the entrance exam, and 184 passed the test, of which 47 are from the cram school in question, according to the school.

It is expected that the school will have to conduct its entrance exam again.

Police said that the teacher, identified by his surname, Lee, is suspected of having stolen 38 out of a total 80 questions from the school computer on the eve of the exam.

The teacher, who is also the chief publicity official at the school, allegedly e-mailed the questions to the head of the cram school - a person whose surname is Gwak. This man and teachers under him are supposed to have distributed the questions, in the form of "possible exam questions," to about 120 students on the morning of the test day, according to police.

Lee is now on the lam, and police are currently tracking his whereabouts.

Lee and Gwak reportedly got acquainted with each other when Lee visited the cram school to explain the high school's admissions guidelines to students in late September.

An NPA official said that Gwak asked Lee to give him the questions before the test, and promised him something in return.

Rumors that exam questions had been leaked started to surface right after the exam ended. These reports quickly circulated on various websites, including those of the school and the Gimpo Education Office.

The school initially denied the charge. However, suspicion has grown due to the poor security regarding how the exams were handled before they were passed out to students. About 20 teachers had been given the task of printing the exam form on Oct. 29, but there was not any significant monitoring system of this process.

According to the Yonhap News Agency, one of the teachers even carried a cell phone, which was a banned item when the tests were being printed.


By Song Sang-ho


([email protected])






2007.11.12

[Yu_Bum_suk]

All the crimes they commit and this is the one they get busted for. The fact that they can take this one so seriously just goes to show how little authorities care about all of the others.

[Snowkr]

Really interesting story.
I am curious... these foreign language high schools... are they private? I thought for awhile that I wanted to work in a school like that until I heard stories of parents bribing teachers and test results being fabricated or fixed.

[Whistleblower]

Arrest the school principal. I am sure he is earning a small wedge of cash leaking exam papers to hagwons, or is that too logical for Koreans?

[Pyongshin Sangja]

That's not cheating. It's a wise use of the available resources. They are very cunning. They should (and will) be released with a slap on the wrist.

[bassexpander]

More foolishness like this only makes foreigners look good, as every Korean tries to escape the land of the morning calm for education overseas.

[The Hammer]

That sucks for the kids that took the test and passed without cheating. Now they may have to do it again.

[yingwenlaoshi]

Kind of like insider trading. I've always wondered how they actually prove it.

The only way they could prove this is if they had sufficient evidence that the tests were stolen i.e. video taped, possession of copies (hard, e-mail, text, etc.), or audio taped/witnessed converstations. I dunno.

[Whistleblower]

... also going into hiding is a good signal that you are embarassed of doing something morally wrong, i.e. leaking school tests. I think I was right, the school principal sold the papers to the local hagwons for beer tokens or should I say soju tokens?

[CentralCali]

[Beej]

Your sarcasm-o-meter must be turned off.

[CentralCali]

Yep, missed that one. Have to double-check when reading early in the morning!

But I bet the crooks who did this crime toss that "it's not cheating" line up as a defense.

[jaderedux2]

[bellum99]

Don't worry..they can find something else to blame on us. After all...it is never a Koreans fault when there is someone else around.