"Doomgang" and the Black Market: The Many Faces of Law School Education

Law School Students Listen to Illegal Recorded Lectures
Spend Millions of Won on Online Courses
"We Have No Choice Due to the High Costs"

Kim Soyeon (30), a third-year student at a law school in Seoul, first encountered a "Doomgang" (illegal online lecture) in civil law as soon as she entered school. She received a package containing 117 video lectures, each lasting 60 to 70 minutes, bundled together with PDF textbooks. "Bitgang" refers to lectures taken at the regular price, while "Doomgang" is a slang term for illegally recorded lectures. The person who delivered the files was using a "Telegram account that had already been deleted." Soyeon purchased an online lecture package from a Doomgang dealer at half the official price.

Soyeon said, "A Bitgang costs around 900,000 won, and at most, three people can access it simultaneously," adding, "With a Doomgang, up to 20 people can share it for half the price, and you also get the textbook in PDF format, so many students struggling with education costs use it secretly."

She explained that a significant number of law school students listen to these lectures for pre-study to manage their grades in the first year. The price is about 40% to 60% of the official online lecture. After illegal online lecture use was discovered at a law school in Seoul, the old culture of seniors sharing files at alumni gatherings has disappeared. Recently, specialized Doomgang dealers share files, delete their accounts, and create new ones to conduct transactions.

The burden of education costs is a major factor driving the illegal distribution of online lectures. According to the education sector on May 27, the average tuition for the 25 law schools nationwide was about 8.19 million won per semester as of last year. Students spend almost as much on private education as they do on tuition. To study the latest case law, law school students typically need to purchase an unlimited online lecture pass costing around 3.2 million won, but Doomgangs are usually available for individual subjects, mostly from the previous year’s lectures. Soyeon said, "If Doomgangs didn’t exist, I would have spent about 3 million won per semester from my first year. Calculating that over three years, the amount exceeds 20 million won."

The fundamental reason is that regular law school education does not substitute for entrance exam preparation. According to law school students, regular classes, which focus on basic theory, do not provide enough training in test-taking strategies or problem-solving. Many are dissatisfied with law school lectures themselves. Lee Eunyoung (29), a second-year student at a national university law school in a provincial city, said, "Professors sometimes conduct classes poorly or lecture their own opinions, which differ from actual case law," adding, "From a student’s perspective, we need to memorize case law, but with classes and exam prep being separate, we have no choice but to rely on online lectures."

At a bar exam retaker management center in Sillim-dong, students are divided into A, B, C, and D groups based on their test scores. Law school graduates desperate to pass the exam have no choice but to rely on private education, and those who cannot afford the cost become consumers in the black market. Eunyoung said, "Among friends, we joke that we pay 20 million won a year to the school, spend more on private education, and don’t even know if we’ll pass the bar exam, so law school is a 'money-eating hippo.'"

Han Sanghee, a professor at Konkuk University Law School, said, "As long as the bar exam continues to use relative evaluation and is centered on questions designed to differentiate and eliminate students, it will be difficult to resolve these issues." Cha Jina, a professor at Korea University Law School, said, "As legal education becomes distorted by the types of questions, subjects, and pass rates of the bar exam, the original purpose of introducing law schools is being undermined," adding, "We need to change the system so that students who have taken a thorough theoretical approach can write effective answers."