Hundreds of college students were found to have been admitted illicitly by abusing a special admission system for rural students and overseas Koreans.

The Board of Audit and Inspection released the results of a probe into college admission on Wednesday, and said that it found 865 students illicitly enrolled in colleges nationwide under a program for rural students and overseas Koreans.

“We discovered illegal admission practices for seven students under the overseas Koreans program. Their parents were found to have filed false information regarding their period of overseas stay,” said a board official.

Some parents faked the period of overseas stay in order to meet admission requirements, while other parents even had their children adopted to acquaintances and missionaries living abroad, he said.

The special admission program for overseas Koreans was introduced in 1977 for Koreans who had lived abroad for a long period of time. But it has been often abused by some parents and students as an easy way of entering college in a highly competitive environment.

The board found that the special admission program for rural students to have been more frequently abused. It called into question the legality of 479 students’ admissions from 2009-2011.

In some cases, the high schools that rural students attended were too far away from their parents’ workplaces, as most of the parents changed their home addresses to rural areas on paper while living in cities, auditors said.

The illicit enrollments took place at 55 universities, including some top-tier schools in Seoul. Of them, Korea University had the lion’s share, with 80 rural students being admitted illicitly. Sungkyunkwan University, Sogang University, Ewha Womans University, Hanyang University, Kyung Hee University, Konkuk University, Dongguk University, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies were found to have illicitly admitted between 10 and 40 students each.

By Lee Woo-young  (wylee@heraldcorp.com)