Students sit an exam in Curzon Hall at the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh, in December 2017. Illustrative photo, not the Korean tax accountant exam. Cropped. Image: Azim Khan Ronnie / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0, cropped
Han Won-seok, who came first in South Korea’s tax accountant exam this year, admitted in a video on Sunday that he cheated: he photographed the questions with a miniature camera, sent them to an AI tool and read the answers off a smartphone. Seoul police have opened an investigation, and Han says the same trick got him through part of the accountancy licence exam too.
A near-perfect score that drew suspicion
Han answered 159 of 160 questions correctly in the first stage in April, scoring 397.5 out of 400. That included a perfect mark in introductory tax law, a paper in which the 16,856 candidates averaged 30.18 out of 100 and 74.21% fell below the pass mark of 40, The Korea Herald reported. Candidates get about a minute per question, including time to mark answers.
Three months later he scored 663 out of 800 in the second-stage written exam, an average of 82.87 against a pass mark of 49.75, and on October 28 he learned he had finished first overall.
He then posted his scores and a self-study account online. Tax accountants and tax lawyers said the first-stage score was close to impossible, and speculation spread that he had worn AI smart glasses. Han pushed back hard, reportedly telling critics that “guessing is also a skill” and that the second stage was an essay exam that no device could explain.
“I cheated on the tax accountant examination”
On Sunday he reversed himself in a video on the YouTube channel of his lawyer, Lee Don-ho. It was not glasses, he said, and he described the method in one sentence:
I cheated by using a miniature camera to photograph the exam questions, sending them to AI and checking the answers on a smartphone.
Han Won-seok, in his confession video (translated by The Korea Times)
He did not name the AI tool and refused to give further detail so that others could not copy it. According to the Seoul Economic Daily’s account of the video, he said he cheated in both stages of the tax exam and in the first round of the certified public accountant exam, and admitted lying about it in interviews and in his account of how he passed:
Finishing first was not the result of legitimate effort.
Han Won-seok, as translated by the Seoul Economic Daily
Han, who began studying in his early to mid 30s, said he had left a corporate job to run his own business, which struggled as operating costs rose after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “I wanted to make money, and I hated seeing myself disappoint my parents after leaving a good job,” he said. He also apologised to the candidate who came second, saying he felt he had taken that person’s joy, and to other successful candidates now facing suspicion because of him.
Police step in after the exam agency found nothing
The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency said on Sunday it had opened a formal investigation and promised “swift and rigorous” fact-finding, The Korea Times reported. Han said he had already handed the agency a written confession and a list of evidence. Some of the devices have been destroyed, he said, and he will give investigators the rest.
The confession is awkward for the Human Resources Development Service of Korea, which runs the exam. It initially said it had found no concrete evidence of cheating, and the four proctors who supervised Han across the two stages told it they had seen nothing suspicious. The Korean Association of Certified Tax Accountants had called for a thorough investigation on Thursday while warning that a high score alone should not make someone a suspect. Reports so far don’t say what will happen to Han’s pass.
A warning days before Korea’s college entrance exam
The admission lands days before South Korea’s national college entrance exam on Thursday, November 19, where officials in Seoul have been training to spot smart glasses at test sites. Han said he would tell police how he planned and practised the cheating to help stop the same thing in other qualification exams and the college test.
Camera glasses with built-in AI assistants are already worrying regulators elsewhere: Norway wants to ban AI glasses from schools and parks because people can be filmed without knowing it, and Google’s Gemini glasses went on sale this week from $395. By Han’s account, he did not even need them: a hidden camera and a phone were enough to get past four proctors.
Why it matters
A chatbot carried a candidate to first place in a national professional exam, and only his own boasting exposed it. Exam bodies that rely on proctors watching for suspicious behaviour now have evidence that this is not enough when any question can be photographed and answered by AI in seconds.
Sources: Han Won-seok’s confession video on lawyer Lee Don-ho’s YouTube channel; The Korea Times; Seoul Economic Daily; The Korea Herald.
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