In a pre-recorded video posted to the official YouTube channel of his legal representative Lee Don-Ho, 34-year-old Han Won-seok, who secured the top score in South Korea’s national certified tax accountancy examination, issued a full public confession of orchestrating a multi-stage cheating scheme that leveraged miniature camera hardware, a personal smartphone, and generative artificial intelligence tools to obtain near-perfect marks. Han disclosed that he had already submitted a formal written confession to the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency, walking investigators through every step of his fraud.
His unprecedented score of 397.5 out of a possible 400 in the first round of the exam – missing only one single question out of 160 total – immediately triggered widespread public skepticism and viral online debate when results were first released, as such a flawless performance is nearly unheard of in the notoriously rigorous professional qualification test. After initially denying all allegations of misconduct when the first cheating claims emerged, Han stated he ultimately chose to come clean out of consideration for the second-place finisher, who faced unfair public suspicion due to the scandal, as well as to apologize to all other test-takers who had earned their passing scores through legitimate, months-long preparation. He noted that his fraudulent actions had cast unwarranted doubt on the validity of every other candidate’s hard-earned achievement.
Han explained that he deployed his microcamera to capture full images of the test questions during both the first and second rounds of the high-stakes exam, transmitted the content to a generative AI platform, and cross-referenced the outputs on his hidden smartphone to complete his answers. He shared that his sole motivation for the fraud was to secure a stable, well-paying professional role that would restore his parents’ pride in him.
The admission prompted an immediate emergency meeting convened by South Korea’s Ministry of Employment and Labour and the Human Resources Development Service to address the breach. Senior presidential policy official Ha Jun-kyung announced sweeping new anti-cheating protocols would be rolled out for all national standardized tests, and issued a stern warning that authorities would retroactively investigate and prosecute all prior unreported instances of test fraud to the full extent of the law. Government officials confirmed that any individual confirmed to have used AI tools to cheat on the tax accountancy exam will have their professional qualification permanently revoked, and face a five-year ban from sitting for the test again.
The high-profile scandal broke just days ahead of South Korea’s annual national college entrance exam, a make-or-break academic milestone that shapes the lifelong career trajectories of millions of young people across the country. The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency officially confirmed to local Yonhap News Agency that the case has been formally assigned to a dedicated team of criminal investigators for a full probe.
This incident is part of a rapidly growing trend of AI-fueled test fraud across South Korea’s high-stakes standardized testing ecosystem. Just one month prior, two college applicants were caught attempting to cheat on entrance assessments at two separate Seoul universities using AI-powered smart glasses. Data from the national education ministry also documents four separate confirmed cases of AI glasses-enabled cheating in middle and high school examinations over the past 12 months, as increasingly accessible sophisticated AI tools create new loopholes for bad actors to exploit.