Police apprehended a student Thursday for allegedly murdering his mother, having been unable to deal with her increasing academic expectations, and leaving her body to rot for months in their apartment.

According to the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency, the high school senior, 18, stabbed his mother, 51, in the throat with a kitchen knife in March and left her body to decompose in a room for eight months.

“I was afraid of the severe punishment I was going to receive when my mother found out that I forged my grades to say I was 62nd in the nation during the next day’s Parent Teacher Night,” confessed the student.

The names of the student and his family members were undisclosed to the media.

Authorities said the student confessed that his mother constantly pressured him to be “first in the nation,” and to “go to Seoul National University’s School of Law.

Police say that the mother resorted to violence and other means of torture including withholding food or sleep, when his grades failed to meet her expectations.

Authorities found that the student had been forging his report cards since middle school and his actual pretest scores put the teen academically within the nation’s top 4,000 students. Police also found that his self-graded scores of the College Scholastic Ability Test earlier in the month put him in similar outstanding ranking.

Police found that the young man had sealed the room door with glue as the odor from the decomposing body began to grow.

The student was caught after his estranged father, who recently returned after walking out on the family five years ago, called the police after detecting the putrid odor.

By Robert Lee (robert@heraldcorp.com)