Top-scoring candidate in South Korea's certified tax accountant examination admits to cheating

Han Won-seok, the candidate who ranked first in South Korea's certified tax accountant examination, admitted that he used a miniature camera, a phone and generative AI to cheat in the first and second rounds of the exam. The 34-year-old candidate scored 397.5 out of 400 in the first round, getting only 1 question wrong out of 160; the unusually high score initially prompted suspicion and online speculation. In a video posted on the YouTube account of lawyer Lee Don-Ho, he confessed that he used a miniature camera to photograph the exam questions and sent them to AI, then used a smartphone to check the answers, and that he had turned himself in to the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency. South Korea's Ministry of Employment and Labor and the Human Resources Development Service of Korea held an emergency meeting over this; presidential policy chief Ha Jun-kyung said new measures to prevent cheating would be introduced and that past cheating would be thoroughly investigated; the government said that anyone found to have used AI to cheat on this exam will be disqualified and barred from retaking it for five years. The scandal occurred just days before South Korea's annual college entrance examination.