A South Korean student’s mother and her tutor were recently arrested after trying to break into the girl’s school in order to steal exam papers and ensure that she aced her tests.
South Korea’s education system was recently rocked by a scandal involving illegal tutoring, breaking and entering, as well as attempted theft of exam papers by a parent and a teacher with the goal of maintaining a student at the top of her class at any cost. On July 4, at around 02:00 in the morning, the alarm went off at a girls’ school in Andong, North Gyeongsang, and security camera footage showed two women trying to access an office where printed copies of school exams were being stored. The perpetrators were arrested the following day, and an investigation found that one of them was the mother of a valedictorian student at the school, and the other was a former teacher there who had been tutoring the same student for years.
The JoongAng Daily newspaper reported that the 31-year-old teacher had been working at the school until February 2024 and managed to enter the premises in the middle of the night by using the fingerprint scanner. Apparently, her biometrics had remained in the school’s security database, and she was able to enter the school whenever she pleased. Security camera showed her and another 48-year-old woman making their way to the third-floor faculty offices, where printed copies of exam papers were stored.
Although the teacher entered the passcode correctly, the alarm system went off, causing the two women to flee in panic. Unfortunately, their late-night adventure was caught on camera, and they were arrested the very next day. It turned out that the teacher’s accomplice was the mother of a top student at the school, and police suspect that the duo had long worked together to keep the girl’s grades up.
The disgraced teacher served as the student’s homeroom teacher, and she is now suspected of having tutored her since, an act prohibited by Korean law. Investigators believe that she had been providing the girl’s mother with test papers for at least two years, as bank records show that she received 2 million won ($1,440) from the woman during each exam period since 2023.
After the recent incident, the school confirmed that the 31-year-old teacher entered the premises at least seven times after resigning in February of last year, mostly during exam periods, raising suspicions that this was not her first rodeo. She had allegedly bribed the school facilities manager as well, as police found that they not only allowed her into the school but tampered with the security cameras as well, to delete evidence.
“It’s shocking to think something like this, which feels straight out of a drama, happened in our community,” the mother of a student at the school said. “There are rumors that the mother did this to get her daughter into medical school.”
Police are currently investigating the pair on a series of charges, including unlawful entry into a special facility and obstruction of business. As for the student who allegedly benefited from their crimes, she was at the top of her class but has since been expelled from the school and all her test results have been invalidated.
