South Korean tax exam top scorer admits to using AI for cheating

A 34-year-old candidate who achieved the highest score on South Korea’s certified tax accountancy examination has admitted to using a miniature camera, a smartphone and generative AI tools to cheat. Han Won-seok confessed to the deception in a video posted on the YouTube channel of his lawyer, Lee Don-Ho, on Sunday.

The candidate attained 397.5 out of 400 points during the first round of testing, missing only one of 160 questions. This near-perfect performance triggered online speculation and accusations of malpractice, which Han initially denied before ultimately admitting his wrongdoing to the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency.

Explaining his method, Han stated, "I cheated in both the first and second rounds of the tax account exam by using electronic devices and generative AI." He described using a microcamera to capture images of the test questions, which were then sent to an AI tool, with the resulting answers checked on his smartphone.

The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency confirmed they had received a written confession from the candidate's legal representative and have assigned the case to investigators. Han apologised for his actions, noting that his behaviour had cast suspicion on other successful candidates who had passed the examinations fairly.

Following the admission, the Ministry of Employment and Labour and the Human Resources Development Service convened an emergency meeting. Government officials have warned that those found to have used AI to cheat will have their qualifications revoked and face a five-year ban from retaking the exam.

Ha Jun-kyung, the policy chief for the South Korean president, stated that new preventative measures would be introduced, warning that "past crimes" would be "tracked down and apprehended to the very end." This scandal emerges just days before the country’s annual college entrance exam, a critical event for students' future career paths.