hankyoreh

This building in Cupertino, California, houses a college admission consulting agency run by a Chinese individual. Han Dong-hoon’s sister-in-law, a 49-year-old surnamed Jin, registered the same building as the address of her own university admissions consulting agency in a list of Korean-run businesses. (Kim Ji-eun/The Hankyoreh)

Editor’s note: “The privileged class seems to believe that there’s nothing wrong with buying academic credentials with money. It’s as though they think of it as a sort of competence in its own right.”

This is one of the things a 45-year-old Korean parent said during a meeting with the Hankyoreh on June 2 in Cupertino, California, where Apple’s corporate headquarters is located. Even for someone living in Silicon Valley, where a single household needs a total income of at least US$200,000 to cope with the area’s high rent and cost of living, a world they couldn’t dare dream of joining hovers beyond reach.

A student at an international school in Songdo, Incheon, the daughter of South Korean Justice Minister Han Dong-hoon has a flashy resume: according to it, she’s authored a scholarly article, been published, founded a volunteer organization, formulated a development plan for a mobile phone application, and participated in an art exhibit. But on the flip side are allegations of plagiarism and ghostwriting, which can be traced back to an industry based on the intellectual exploitation of young people from developing nations, including Kenya.

Han’s daughter utilized a predatory journal, one that muddies research ethics, and has exchanged resume-padding opportunities with the daughters of her 49-year-old aunt, a US college admissions expert surnamed Jin.

The Hankyoreh visited San Jose and other cities neighboring California’s Silicon Valley, where Jin worked, from June 1 through Thursday, interviewing 22 individuals, among them parents, students, and admissions consultants. This area is where Jin’s daughters — who were in a credential-building club with Han’s daughter — went to high school, and where Asian students engage in fierce competition with each other to get into prestigious US universities.

Those who had experienced US college admissions were enraged by the opportunities the daughters of Han and Jin had obtained through shortcuts, saying that even if everyone begins the race at different starting lines, they still all should follow its basic rules. They were also concerned that the controversy surrounding Han’s daughter would have negative repercussions on how trustworthy US schools viewed Korean students as a whole.

Unlike in Korea, where college admissions require clear documentation, US college admissions operate on the assumption that students are being honest. In place of prior vetting, the US upholds its reliability by severely punishing students who are shown to have cheated through suspensions or expulsions.

Following the COVID-19 pandemic, prestigious US universities began accepting applications without SAT or other standardized test scores starting with their Fall 2021 admissions, which in turn manifoldly increased the importance of extracurricular and volunteer activities in college admissions.

Some Korean students are taking advantage of this policy by filling their resumes with scholarly and other publications that draw suspicions of plagiarism and ghostwriting.

A US college admissions expert told the Hankyoreh, “Some US college admissions consultancies are asking for several to hundreds of million won in consultation fees, promising to ghostwrite even international [high] school assignments and give [potential clients] the opportunity to co-write academic articles with Ivy League professors — which is essentially fraud.”

A Kenyan individual who introduced themselves as a university professor said, “I ghostwrote college essays for 13 Korean students at a rate of US$20 per page.”

If such illegal and fraudulent resume padding becomes more widespread could lead to the breakdown of trust, harming Korean students in the US as a whole.

Through its three-part series “A League of Their Own: Toward Becoming Elite,” the Hankyoreh aims to shed light on and critique the “global resume-padding industry” that South Korean elites mobilize in order to hand down their academic credentials — a degree from a prestigious US university — to their children.

The worldwide COVID-19 pandemic greatly altered the US college admission process. On June 15, 2020, Harvard University announced on its website that it would “allow students to apply for admission to the Class of 2025 without requiring standardized test scores,” adding, “Students who do not submit standardized testing this coming year will not be disadvantaged in the application process.”

Following Harvard’s announcement, the eight universities that make up the Ivy League implemented a “test optional” policy, whereby students applying without SAT or other standardized test scores would not be disadvantaged in their application process. Prestigious US universities had made a momentous decision when the SAT was repeatedly canceled due to the spread of COVID-19.

Because quantitative evaluation through test scores would weigh less in the application process, the importance of extracurricular activities such as volunteer activities increased in US college admissions. As a result, students faced the double burden of having to wade through the difficulties of the COVID-19 pandemic while trying to build exceptional extracurricular records.

An instructor who teaches art for art majors, as well as extracurricular art, said, “Unique extracurricular activities increased in number as the weight of volunteer and other activities grew in US college admissions. It’s reaching a point where people say they have to volunteer in war-torn Ukraine to be recognized [for their activities].”

Jin, the sister-in-law of Han who ran an admissions consultancy in San Jose, seems to have adapted to such changes with speed, considering that Han’s daughter and Jin’s two daughters partook in most of their extracurricular activities after June 2020.

The Pandemic Times, an online media platform for which Han and Jin’s daughters managed a team of Korean students as editors-in-chief, was founded on Aug. 14, 2020, when they were high schoolers. The website of Piece of Talent, the volunteer group Han’s daughter led, launched on June 28, 2020, while the website of Funnyclimate, an environmental group she also led, was unveiled on Oct. 19, 2021. Han and Jin’s daughters also wrote their scholarly articles in 2021.

Han’s daughter began participating in an online volunteer educational program through a welfare center in North Chungcheong Province around the same time period. During a phone call with the Hankyoreh, an official at the welfare center said, “[Han’s daughter] contacted us in August 2020 and started tutoring children in English around that time.”

Writing scholarly articles, publishing, founding and running organizations and media platforms whose activities centered on their websites, and participating in an online volunteer educational program were some of the most effective activities to partake in during the pandemic, when there were limits to in-person activities. Because Han’s daughter and her two cousins were born in three consecutive years, they were preparing for college admissions in similar time periods, which allowed them to share their activities.

Jin’s two daughters each enrolled in Ivy League universities, one in 2021 and the other in 2022.

Jin seems to have expanded her involvement in her daughters’ resume-padding into a business. In San Jose, where she conducted most of her business activities, many witnesses said Jin took payments from students who co-wrote scholarly articles with her daughters in the form of participation fees, and from students who participated in the Pandemic Times to cover the costs of the platform’s website operation.

A Korean parent who resides in California told the Hankyoreh via an acquaintance that Jin asked for US$2,000 as a participation fee for co-authoring a scholarly article. Jin discouraged parents from sharing her rates with each other, saying she would give them a discount because their child was bright or since they were doing more than one activity together. Fees were typically paid through the online payment system PayPal.

Circumstantial evidence suggests that after the Hankyoreh began reporting about allegations that Han’s daughter formed a resume-padding alliance with her cousins, Jin asked parents to state that they never paid any money to her.

The Hankyoreh viewed a text message Jin sent in early to mid-May to the parent of a student who had done extracurricular activities with her daughter. The message read: “Where and how to begin. First, acquaintances are curious as to whether I provided expensive consultations. I’m hoping that those whose names are being mentioned stick to one story. I plan to refund all mentorship fees, and I think stating that you never made any payments to me would cause the least amount of noise.”

Some parents reportedly believe they’ve incurred damages due to Jin but are unable to make a complaint because of their children.

Jin also used another’s address as the address of her private academy without permission. Jin registered a private SAT, math, and English academy called Bookworms Essay on a directory of Korean businesses, but the academy’s address turned out to be that of an admissions consulting firm run by a Chinese individual.

In an email exchange with the Hankyoreh, the president of the consulting firm said, “I was surprised and shocked that [Jin] used my company’s address without my knowledge and without my permission or agreement. If the address is used without permission again, I will take legal action.”

How deeply Jin involved herself in the resume padding of her two daughters and Han’s daughter, whether she partook in illegal activities such as ghostwriting, plagiarism, and tax evasion while providing admissions consulting services to multiple students — there is no dearth of questions concerning the controversy, but the truth has yet to come into view.

The Hankyoreh reached out to Jin on social media, but she did not respond to requests for comment about the allegations.

By Kim Ji-eun, staff reporter; Jung Hwan-bong, staff reporter

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]