Court confirms prison sentence for SAT question leak

This photo is not directly related to the story. A parent of a student preparing for college admission reads the related information in this Dec.12 photo. (Yonhap)

The Supreme Court has confirmed a three-year prison term for a private lecturer who used the time difference between South Korea and other countries to leak questions for the SAT exam used for US college entrance.

According to local media reports on Friday, the tutor was convicted of selling SAT questions that he acquired illegally to the parents of students taking the test in other time zones. Song and his accomplices -- a teacher at a local high school and a broker -- acquired photos of the SAT from someone they planted to take the test, which they then relayed to the students taking the test in countries whose time is behind South Korea.

Song, a lecturer at a private institute in South Korea, was in charge of seeking out buyers and delivering the questions and answers. His crime ring had reportedly made 1.1 billion won ($850,000) from May of 2014 to December of 2019.

In the initial ruling, the lower court had said the crime was "malevolent in nature, and is detrimental to the credibility of American college admission process."

"A punishment is necessary considering that (the defendant) had received payment from students and parents in desperate need of being accepted to a US-based college, and that he forced young students to take part in a crime," the court said.

By Yoon Min-sik(minsikyoon@heraldcorp.com)