An opposition lawmaker Tuesday accused a state-run agency of knowingly giving up profits from its copyrights to the annual college entrance exam.

Rep. Park Hong-keun of the New Politics Alliance for Democracy on Tuesday accused a state-run agency of failing to collect royalties that could amount to billions of won.

The Korea Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation, in charge of preparing questions for the exam, known here as Suneung, has never exercised its copyrights over the exam questions, Park said.

The state-run body customarily posts the test questions on its home page after the exam, and allows anyone to use them as long as it is not for profit. But workbooks containing the questions have hit the market every year.

The annual sales of the workbooks is estimated to be about 10 billion won ($9.2 million), according to Park, and are sold publicly in bookstores across the country.

Korean law states that copyright violators can face up to five years in prison, or a 50 million won fine. The KICE, however, claimed that Suneung questions were considered “public goods” to which exclusive copyrights did not apply.

“The cost for preparing Suneung questions comes from taxes and admission fees by test-takers. By forfeiting the royalty fees, the KICE gave up on a revenue source to ease that financial burden,” said Rep. Park. “We have to figure out if this is due to incompetence of the education authorities, or if there is some sort of ‘connection’ between them and the publishers that profited from selling the workbooks.”

In 2014, it cost 6.4 billion won to prepare the questions for the state-commissioned Suneung.

Later in the day, the KICE denied allegations of illegal collaboration with local publishers and claimed the reason they did not collect royalty fees was to ensure that students would not shoulder extra financial burden. A KICE official said publishers are likely to charge more to students if it started charging the publishers for the questions.

He said the agency will work the the Education Ministry to find best possible approach to copyright. This includes possibly changing the policy to collect royalty fees, although he added that the agency was looking at all options.

By Yoon Min-sik (minsikyoon@heraldcorp.com)