By Chung Ah-young
A high court in Seoul convicted a man of illegally leaking and distributing questions for the Scholastic Aptitude Tests (SATs) in 2012-2013, Tuesday.
Upholding a lower court ruling, the appeals court ordered the man, surnamed Kim, to pay 4 million won in fines and forfeit an additional 4 million won which he had earned through selling the questions.
The SAT is a test taken worldwide for college admissions in the United States, owned and administered by Education Testing Service (ETS) of Princeton, New Jersey. ETS prohibits the sharing of test questions or answers. It provides only part of the questions through its authorized channels but no questions may be distributed or reproduced without consent from ETS.
Kim purchased the questions from a broker and sold them to lecturers, cram school operators and other brokers from July 2012 to June 2013, gaining some 4 million won.
Later that year, the prosecution indicted 22 people including Kim for leaking the questions. The other 21 defendants have been on trial in the lower court.
"The lower court ruling seemed light considering Kim's act caused unfavorable results for many Korean students," the court said. "However, such an act was attributed to social problems that many people want to raise their scores within a short period of time through illegal means. So we have upheld the lower court ruling."
In 2007, ETS cancelled the scores of some 900 Korean students who took the test in January after suspicions arose that some had illegal access to the questions in advance.
Following the repeated leakage scandals, ETS reduced the number of tests from six to four in 2013.
A high court in Seoul convicted a man of illegally leaking and distributing questions for the Scholastic Aptitude Tests (SATs) in 2012-2013, Tuesday.
Upholding a lower court ruling, the appeals court ordered the man, surnamed Kim, to pay 4 million won in fines and forfeit an additional 4 million won which he had earned through selling the questions.
The SAT is a test taken worldwide for college admissions in the United States, owned and administered by Education Testing Service (ETS) of Princeton, New Jersey. ETS prohibits the sharing of test questions or answers. It provides only part of the questions through its authorized channels but no questions may be distributed or reproduced without consent from ETS.
Kim purchased the questions from a broker and sold them to lecturers, cram school operators and other brokers from July 2012 to June 2013, gaining some 4 million won.
Later that year, the prosecution indicted 22 people including Kim for leaking the questions. The other 21 defendants have been on trial in the lower court.
"The lower court ruling seemed light considering Kim's act caused unfavorable results for many Korean students," the court said. "However, such an act was attributed to social problems that many people want to raise their scores within a short period of time through illegal means. So we have upheld the lower court ruling."
In 2007, ETS cancelled the scores of some 900 Korean students who took the test in January after suspicions arose that some had illegal access to the questions in advance.
Following the repeated leakage scandals, ETS reduced the number of tests from six to four in 2013.
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