A person walks past a cram school advertisement in Seoul, Feb. 3. Yonhap

Over 240 public and private school teachers have been caught selling mock exam questions to private academies and earning around 21.3 billion won ($14.7 million) in six years, state auditors said Tuesday.

Releasing its report on collusive ties between public and private educators, the Board of Audit and Inspection (BAI) said 249 teachers sold exam questions between 2018 and June 2023, earning an average of 85 million won each.

The BAI said it has requested disciplinary action against 29 teachers whose misconduct was deemed to be serious, including eight public school and 21 private school teachers, and asked the education ministry to take appropriate measures in coordination with the local education authorities against the remaining 220 teachers.

According to the audit, the transactions typically began by private cram schools obtaining a list of authors of EBS textbooks or using personal connections to contact teachers capable of creating mock tests.

The institutions and teachers then agreed on the pricing depending on the type and difficulty of the questions.

Some of these teachers were found to have leaked EBS texts before they were published and used the same questions they had sold to cram schools in school exams, while others participated as College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) question committee members despite their illicit deals with private academies.

The BAI further announced the measures it has taken regarding the controversy surrounding a local professor's unauthorized reuse of EBS texts in the English exam of the 2023 CSAT.

The audit urged the professor's university to issue a warning against the professor, and the Korea Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation (KICE) to take disciplinary action, including dismissal or suspension of duty, against three of its officials who had dismissed complaints by students. (Yonhap)