South Korean tax exam’s top scorer admits AI-assisted cheating

Each first-stage session allowed 80 minutes for 80 questions across two subjects, including time to mark answers. That time pressure added to candidates’ suspicions.

In July’s written second stage, he scored 663 out of 800. His reported average of 82.87 out of 100 exceeded the passing cutoff of 49.75. Across that second round, 722 of 6,606 candidates passed, a rate of 10.92 percent. Those figures show the selectivity of the qualification; they do not, by themselves, establish cheating.

Han had publicized his scores and described passing through self-study. As other candidates and tax professionals questioned the results, he denied wrongdoing. In his confession, he acknowledged that his preparation account and interviews contained false statements and that he had continued lying after suspicions arose, according to the account of his statement.

Appearing on the YouTube channel of his lawyer, Lee Don-ho, the managing lawyer of Nova law firm, Han said he cheated in both stages of the tax accountant examination and used the same method in the first round of the certified public accountant examination in March. The admission therefore extends beyond the result that first brought him public attention.

Lee said he reviewed the evidence and recommended that Han turn himself in on November 13; Han decided to do so that night. His public confession followed two days later.

A security problem beyond smart glasses

Earlier suspicions focused on AI-equipped glasses. Han instead described a camera-and-phone arrangement. His lawyer withheld detailed mechanics to discourage imitation. The public account does not identify the AI model or independently establish how reliably it answered the questions; the confession is not a controlled measure of AI performance on either examination.

The agency had said two supervisors were assigned to each examination room. Han sat in the center of the second row in the first stage and the center of the first row in the second, measured from the teaching platform, according to its explanation of the seating arrangements. His account raises questions about supervision even near the front of the room.

The proposed institutional response was already taking shape before he admitted cheating. A November 13 report on a parliamentary budget proposal, citing the National Assembly and labor ministry, described a proposed 6.573 billion won increase for the agency’s qualification-testing operations. The office of Kim Wi-sang, a People Power Party lawmaker on the parliamentary climate, energy, environment and labor committee, prepared the proposal for the following year’s budget using cost estimates supplied by the agency.

The plan allocated 3.6 billion won for 7,200 radio-signal detectors and 2.973 billion won for specialist personnel to monitor smart-device cheating. No separate budget for that purpose had been allocated that year, the report said.

That report said six smart-glasses cheating cases had been detected in national qualification examinations through the end of October. The agency said its qualification-testing operations draw about 4.4 million candidates annually and argued that smart glasses resemble ordinary spectacles, making visual identification difficult. It acknowledged that observing unusual behavior alone had limitations. Those figures concern its broader testing operations, rather than the tax accountant examination alone. Neither establishes how much cheating went undetected.

The spending remained a proposal subject to parliamentary budget deliberations. The agency sought equipment to detect wireless signals used by smart glasses and similar devices. Authorities still need to establish which devices and signals were involved in Han’s case before assessing whether the proposed equipment would have detected his method.

The proposed security budget allocates 3.6 billion won to detectors and 2.973 billion won to specialist staff, subject to parliamentary deliberations. Source: Yonhap News Agency.

Investigators must establish the method and consequences

Seoul police said they received a written confession through Han’s lawyer and assigned the case to the metropolitan investigation unit. Han said some devices were damaged and that he would submit the remaining evidence; a list of intended submissions had accompanied his confession, according to the report on the investigation.

The finance ministry said it was seeking a swift process through the tax accountant qualification deliberation committee under the National Tax Service to suspend the validity of his passing certificate. The ministry said his admission justified acting quickly, although misconduct sanctions ordinarily follow confirmation of the facts through an investigation. Suspension was being pursued, rather than reported as completed.

The investigation comes before South Korea’s national college entrance examination on November 19, which has heightened concern over AI-assisted cheating, as the report on the wider examination concerns describes. Investigators must establish what the surviving evidence proves, how the devices were used across the examinations and how they escaped supervision. Their findings will matter both to the decision on his examination result and to the security measures authorities choose.