Police are widening an investigation into alleged corruption at a public university after a professor was found to have offered illegal private tutoring to students in exchange for admission.

Police requested Sunday an arrest warrant for the 44-year-old contrabass professor of Korea National University of Art. He was charged with offering illegal private tutoring to high school students preparing for the school’s admission test, and giving them undeserved high scores.

According to the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency, the professor received about 40 million won ($35,124) in total for teaching 13 students from 2006 to 2010.

National university professors are banned from tutoring students privately.

Police also confirmed that 19 students taught by the professor from 2002 had been accepted to the KNUA.

The professor even demanded parents buy a contrabass for 180 million won, falsely claiming it was a prestigious instrument made by famous Italian instrument-maker Giuseppe Baldantoni.

He also demanded an additional 80 million won after the student received an admission letter from the school.

Police said Lee asked the parents to make false statements to police and hide evidence when they started to probe the case.

Lee was once suspended from teaching for three months and his admissions director position for a year after a school probe into similar cases in 2004.

But he continued private tutoring by transferring the tutoring room to his wife’s name.

“The admissions test of KNUA is susceptible to admission fraud as judges can see who’s playing and share their scores with other judges,” said a police officer.

Lee gave the highest scores to his students so that other professors would follow suit.

A university official said that in other universities’ admission tests, judges are not allowed to know students’ names in advance, or even watch the performance as there is a curtain between them.

The judges only know the student’s number, which is assigned immediately before the test.

Admission fraud has been rampant in music, art and sports.

State audits have found other music professors, who are often on the judging committees of music entrance exams, privately tutoring students.

“Admission fraud in the music field happens frequently because there are not many pools of professors that can evaluate students’ performance during the admission process,” said Yang Jung-Ho, education professor of Sungkyunwan University, to The Korea Herald.

There are just one or two professors for certain music majors and they are the only ones who can oversee entrance exams.

That makes the blind test ineffective as they easily recognize the students they privately taught from distinct characteristics in their performance.

“Schools need to impose stricter ethical standards on music professors and adopt a more objective admission process,” he added.

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