“It Makes No Sense When I Try It Myself”...Veteran Tax Accountant Questions a 100-Point Score

[Financial News] Amid allegations that the top scorer on the tax accountant exam cheated using AI smart glasses, a practicing tax accountant and lawyer who previously worked for the National Tax Service took the same exam and scored 37.5 points. He said the subject in which the top scorer earned a perfect score was extremely difficult and called for a thorough investigation into what happened.
On the 13th, a video titled “Tax Accountant Exam Top Scorer’s AI Glasses Controversy: I Tried Solving the Questions Myself” was posted to the YouTube channel “Kim Jae-hwan Lawyer and Tax Accountant.” The channel’s operator, lawyer Kim Jae-hwan, is a former National Tax Service investigator and a tax lawyer who holds a tax accountant license.
In the video, Kim spent about 40 minutes answering the 40 questions in the Introduction to Tax Law section of this year’s first-stage tax accountant exam, allotting one minute per question as in the actual exam. The first-stage exam requires candidates to answer a total of 80 questions in Public Finance and Introduction to Tax Law within 80 minutes.
As he worked through the questions, he considered his answers several times. At one point, he loosened his tie and then refocused on the test.
After his answers were graded, lawyer Kim had answered 15 of the 40 questions correctly and received a score of 37.5.
“I said I had studied tax law for nearly 10 years or more, but I scored 37.5,” he said. “I got 15 of the 40 questions right.”
He added, “A lot of the ones I got right were guesses. I’ve dealt with the Framework Act on National Taxes and the Adjustment of International Taxes Act extensively, so I got a few of those right, but the other questions were difficult to solve.”
Kim said the questions had become more difficult compared with when he took the exam.
“The questions are harder than they were in my day,” he said. “There are more than 10 calculation questions in particular, and each one takes up a whole page. There were questions I couldn’t even begin to work on, so I guessed.”
Kim also expressed serious doubts about the perfect score.
“It’s impossible to get 100 on this exam. It makes no sense. After trying it myself, I felt that even more strongly,” he said.
He added, “That’s what I think even after taking the exam myself as a practicing tax accountant, a tax lawyer, and someone with experience at the National Tax Service. Answering every question in Introduction to Tax Law correctly at a pace of one per minute is in the realm of the divine. It’s like a 100-meter sprinter posting a time in the 8-second range—faster than Usain St. Leo Bolt.”
“I want to speak even more forcefully. Honestly, if I followed my heart, I would want to file a criminal complaint just to get to the bottom of this,” Kim said, stressing that the allegations should be thoroughly investigated.
He also questioned the “process of elimination” that Han, the top-scoring candidate, cited as the key to the high score.
“The process of elimination isn’t some special trick; it’s a method used in every multiple-choice exam, including the bar exam, the tax accountant exam, and civil service exams,” Kim said. “When I heard the explanation that the candidate used that method, I wondered whether they understood the nature or difficulty of the exam.”
At the same time, he said a high score alone should not be taken as proof of cheating.
“You can’t conclude that someone cheated just because they received a high exam score,” Kim said. “But the fairness of the tax accountant exam and the public’s trust in the entire qualification system are at stake, so the facts need to be established.”
The controversy began on the 11th, when the tax news outlet Daily NTN (Kukse Sinmun) published an account of how Han, this year’s top scorer on the tax accountant exam, passed.
Han said they scored 397.5 out of 400 on the 63rd first-stage tax accountant exam, held last April. Of the 160 questions, they got only one wrong in Public Finance and earned perfect scores in Introduction to Tax Law, Introduction to Accounting, and Commercial Law.
Introduction to Tax Law was a particularly difficult subject: the average score among all test takers was just 30.18 points. According to grading statistics from the Human Resources Development Service of Korea, 74.21% of test takers scored below 40 and failed the subject, while Han received 100 points.
After Han’s score became public, allegations circulated online that they had cheated using AI smart glasses. Han denied the allegations and explained that they had used the process of elimination to answer questions they did not know.
On the 12th, the Korean Tax Accountants Association called for a thorough investigation into the allegations. It also said that cheating by a particular candidate should not be conclusively determined based solely on exam scores.
On the 13th, the Human Resources Development Service of Korea said that after checking with the four exam proctors, it had found nothing unusual that would suggest cheating. So far, it has also secured no concrete evidence to support the allegation that AI glasses were used.
The agency is conducting an expert review of Han’s essay answers for the second-stage tax accountant exam.
[email protected] Han Seung-gon Reporter