Students and Parents Manipulating 'Spec' with Academy-Written Reports... Ultimately Leading to Trial

[Asia Economy Reporter Baek Kyunghwan] Students and parents who submitted papers and invention reports written by a tutor from an 'admission consulting' academy to competitions and received awards. Some of them were admitted to universities through early admission based on these awards. Although it did not affect college entrance, some students built their credentials through winning prizes. All of them have been prosecuted. The head of the admission consulting academy was sentenced to 1 year and 4 months in prison at trial.

Recently, the prosecution indicted a total of 41 people, including 39 students who won awards with ghostwritten reports and 2 parents, on charges of obstruction of business or obstruction of official duties by deception.

The indicted students are currently aged 20 to 22 and were high school students at the time of the crime. They are accused of registering at an admission consulting academy from 2017 to 2019 to prepare for college entrance, submitting reports written by tutors as if they had written them themselves to internal and external competitions, thereby obstructing fair judging processes. The prosecution classified submitting reports to external competitions and private school internal competitions as obstruction of business, and submitting to public school internal competitions as obstruction of official duties by deception.

Among them, 10 students submitted their competition awards as part of their university applications and were admitted through early admission. Two parents are accused of submitting ghostwritten reports under their children's names to competitions, enabling their children to win awards. The 10 students and 2 parents were indicted without detention.

The remaining 28 students won awards in competitions but were admitted through regular admission, so their awards did not affect their entrance. However, they received summary indictments. Seventeen students who were not found guilty of ghostwriting or did not participate were cleared of charges. Four students still attending high school received deferred prosecution.

Earlier, the Cyber Safety Division of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency referred 60 students involved in this case and 18 academy officials in Seoul to the prosecution with recommendations for indictment last year. Police investigations revealed that students paid up to 5.6 million KRW per submission to the academy. The ghostwritten works spanned all fields including humanities, sciences, and arts and physical education, and took various forms such as book reports, inventions, theses, and reports.

Park, a man in his 40s who operated the academy, was first indicted on charges of instructing tutors to ghostwrite theses under students' names and was sentenced to 1 year and 4 months in prison in the first trial. Kim, who served as director and deputy director, was sentenced to 1 year in prison with a 3-year probation and 200 hours of community service.

The prosecution held a citizen committee meeting regarding whether to indict the students. The committee resolved that prosecution should be differentiated based on whether the competition awards from ghostwriting actually influenced university admissions. The prosecution is continuing investigations into the remaining 16 academy staff including tutors.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.