Generative AI tools like ChatGPT are no longer a novelty — they’ve become the academic norm. (Image created by AI/ChatGPT)
SEOUL, April 21 (Korea Bizwire) — The 2025 spring semester has brought a striking shift to South Korean university campuses: generative AI tools like ChatGPT are no longer a novelty — they’ve become the academic norm.
From lecture halls to online classrooms, students across the country are increasingly relying on artificial intelligence to complete assignments, generate presentations, summarize course materials, and even compose music.
Posts on student community platforms like Everytime now openly share tips on how to score perfect grades using ChatGPT, suggesting methods such as capturing PowerPoint slides from online lectures and prompting the chatbot to summarize them onto a single A4 sheet for submission.
“In my class, students don’t take notes anymore,” said a professor in the industrial design department at a university in the Seoul metropolitan area. “They just take pictures of the slides or the chalkboard and ask ChatGPT to turn them into a clean summary.”
The AI-assisted academic routine has grown so normalized that students rarely attempt to conceal it. “Some even copy and paste ChatGPT’s entire output, including the final line asking ‘Would you like me to rephrase this?’” lamented an engineering professor at a private university in Seoul. “I expected students to use it, but not this brazenly.”
Presentation slides, once a space for student creativity, are now largely machine-generated. In music departments, cases have emerged of students using AI to both compose and write lyrics for assignments — prompting grade penalties from professors who discovered the practice.
Computer science exams, which require programming, have seen students discreetly use AI-generated code, with classmates occasionally reporting suspected misuse.
Students argue they have little choice. In a hypercompetitive academic environment, falling behind peers who use AI tools feels risky. “Everyone’s using it — not using it feels like I’m putting myself at a disadvantage,” said Cho, a third-year English literature student at a private university in Seoul.
On YouTube, videos titled ‘Complete your assignment in 5 minutes with ChatGPT’ and ‘How to avoid detection by professors’ are drawing significant attention.
Faculty attitudes are evolving. “Last year, we were still trying to figure out how to catch AI use,” said the same industrial design professor. “Now, there’s a growing sense of inevitability — they’re going to use it anyway.”
While some universities have introduced detection software and treat AI use as a form of plagiarism, enforcement remains weak. Detection tools lag behind the rapid evolution of generative AI, making effective regulation difficult.
Rather than resisting, a growing number of professors are leaning into the change. A journalism professor at a national university told students they could use ChatGPT freely.
“Advertising agencies now specifically ask us to recommend students who know how to use AI well,” the professor said. “Even when I give the same assignment, there’s a quality gap depending on how students use the tool. In the end, effective use of AI is a skill, too.”
As South Korean universities navigate the implications of generative AI, the line between cheating and competence is blurring — and the campus of 2025 looks nothing like that of just a few years ago.
Lina Jang (linajang@koreabizwire.com)
