Twins convicted in Sookmyung Girls' High School exam leak scandal

[Anchor]

You may remember the incident a few years ago regarding the leak of answer sheets for the internal exams at Sookmyung Girls' High School in Seoul.

At that time, the school's head of academic affairs, who was the father, caused a major controversy by providing the answer sheets to his twin children.

After six years, the twins have now been found guilty.

Park Kyung-jun reports.

[Report]

In 2018, in front of a girls' high school in Gangnam, Seoul, parents are holding a candlelight vigil.

They are demanding an investigation into the allegations of leaked internal exam questions.

As a result of the investigation, it was revealed that the twin sisters, who were students at the school, had taken the internal exam after viewing the leaked answer sheets.

The person who provided the answer sheets was their father, who was the head of academic affairs at the school.

[Jin Jeom-ok/Former Head of Investigation Division, Suseo Police Station, Seoul/2018: "As soon as they received the exam papers, they wrote down the memorized answers, which they then transferred to the OMR card."]

The twin sisters were indicted in 2019 on charges of obstruction of business, and the Supreme Court confirmed the original ruling today (12.24), sentencing them to one year in prison with a three-year probation.

It has been six years since the controversy arose.

Earlier, the first and second trial courts recognized their guilt based on the fact that they had written the answers in tiny letters on a notepad and the exam paper, and that there was a significant discrepancy between their scores on national mock exams and academy tests.

The twin sisters claimed that some of the evidence was obtained illegally, but the Supreme Court found that there was sufficient evidence to recognize their guilt.

However, the court ruled that the police's failure to present a search warrant when securing the twins' mobile phones was illegal.

Even though they were minors at the time, a warrant should have been presented as long as they had the capacity to understand.

The father, who leaked the exam questions, had his three-year prison sentence confirmed in 2020 and has since completed his term and been released.

As a result of this incident, the Ministry of Education introduced a 'conflict of interest system' to prevent parents and children from attending the same school.

This is KBS News, Park Kyung-jun.