A student’s mother and her teacher were arrested for breaking into a school to steal exam papers and keep the student at the top of her class.
On July 4, 2025, alarms sounded at a girls’ school in Andong, North Gyeongsang. Security cameras caught two women trying to access the office where printed exam papers were stored.
The perpetrator was a 31-year-old former teacher who had resigned earlier but still had fingerprint access to the school’s security system. According to local media reports, the teacher had been working at the school until February 2024.
The other was the mother of a top-performing student. Together, they headed to the third-floor faculty office where final exams were stored.
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Their plan was foiled when the alarm was triggered by a system error while they tried to enter the exam storage room. They fled but were arrested the next day.
The teacher didn’t just tutor the student—she allegedly broke multiple laws, including unlawful entry and private instruction, which is banned under Korean law.
Investigators found that the teacher had been illegally tutoring the student for years. More shockingly, she had been supplying leaked exam papers to the student’s mother—likely helping the student cheat—since at least 2023.
The mother orchestrated the scheme to ensure her daughter stayed top of the class. Bank records reveal the teacher received about 2 million won, or roughly $1,440, during each exam period from the mother, totaling around 20 million South Korean won, or $14,340.
As a result, the student was expelled, and all her test results were invalidated. When tested without access to the stolen papers, her scores dropped significantly, casting doubt on her academic record.
