Taking online classes and taking exams

‘What to do with ghosts’, in which students who have already died take online classes and submit reports, has recently surprised Chinese society. This same thing was known when a foreign student who used the name’Lucy’ in the online space shared his experiences on the Internet.

According to recent Chinese media such as Hongseong Shinmun and Hwangu Times, Lucy posted an article on the Internet in early December of last year. There was an international student in China in his class, and unfortunately, this student died in a car accident in mid-November.

Lucy took an internet class with this student and exchanged e-mails several times, so she was very distressed when she heard the news of the accident. But then something surprising happened. The dead Chinese student continued to submit homework and participated in the midterm evaluation, as well as e-mails to the teacher.

He also said that he submitted his last report a while ago. All the teachers who were notified of the death of this Chinese student were frightened. In the end, he started investigating the truth, and eventually found out that the student who died was receiving money and dealing with a company that took care of Internet classes.

In China, the substitute for Internet classes is called ‘Dai Sang-wang-ke’, and ‘Chang Seo-woo’ is a person who takes the place of class. Cang Seo-woo does homework, takes exams, participates in group discussions, and sends e-mails to teachers.

The problem was that Chang Seo-woo did not know that a student, a client, died, and kept doing homework and submitting final reports. Accordingly, when the Chinese media reported on’Daisang Wangke’, I could find a number of advertisements related to this.

Most of them had a nameplate of’XX Education, Science and Technology Corporation’, with explanations that they help foreign students in their classes. These companies set service costs in consideration of the country and academic background in which they are studying, the type of Internet class, the name of the Internet class, the time spent on the course, and the grades they want to get.

One company boasted that among Changshou, who took the place of Internet classes, there were also PhD graduate students from prestigious universities, such as Cambridge University in the UK and the University of Pennsylvania in the United States. Students studying abroad at a U.S. university must pay $1750 (about 1.9 million won) to get an A.

On the other hand, if you just want to avoid getting an F grade, the amount goes down to $1350. If you apply for a surrogate class for several subjects, you will receive a discount, and if you have a lot of homework or the class is difficult, you will have to pay an additional 200 to 500 dollars.

These Internet surrogate classes began to sprout little by little before the outbreak of the novel coronavirus infection (Corona 19).

Sheung Bingchi, director of the 21st Century Education Research Institute in China, said, “Internet proxy classes can be expelled by buying credits for money.” .

Beijing = Yoo Sang-chul, correspondent [email protected]