A total of 21 parents received suspended prison terms on Tuesday for securing unlawful admission for their children to foreigner-only schools in South Korea based on fraudulent documents, according to court officials.

The Incheon District Court delivered guilty verdicts to the parents for illegally putting their children in schools for children of foreign residents with fabricated passports and foreign citizenship papers which they bought from brokers.

South Korean students, in principle, can be enrolled at international schools here only if one of their parents is a foreign national, or if a parent and a student have resided overseas for at least three years.

One mother acquired documents for Bulgarian and British citizenship through brokers and submitted forged passports to get her daughter admitted to a local school for children of foreign residents, said court officials.

The other defendant, a daughter of the chairman of one of the major conglomerates here, also purchased a fake Guatemalan passport and used it to transfer her daughter to another international school in Seoul, they said.

Other parents also bought forged passports from African countries from brokers and submitted copies to local international schools, they added. (Yonhap News)