The Korea Herald has more details on the TOPIK cheating scandal. There has been a lot of speculation that cheating is being carried out thanks to complicated time-zone shenanigans, but to me the most important detail from the article at hand is:
“The broker claimed the questions had been obtained from a staff member at a test center in South Korea.”
There is no need for some overly complicated “Oceans 11” style scheme when the same outcome can be had by just bribing some dude at a test center.
Remember that TOPIK includes a paper-based option. Paper-based delivery can be very challenging, as it requires that staff around the world remain honest, diligent and enthusiastic about best practices in test security. I can’t help but think that this is harder than ever in an era impacted by increased out-sourcing, off-shoring and precarious employment.Computer-delivered testing helps to eliminate security breakdowns in the mailing, storing and scoring process. It also makes it possible to deliver different test items to people around the world (or even in the same room). Score users probably should have started asking tough questions about the continued use of paper-delivered testing for high stakes purposes a decade ago. But they didn’t.