During the coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, many universities have adopted online exam proctoring technologies to monitor and control an increasing number of student cheating incidents. Although it looks like a natural and effective solution for a fair assessment of student online learning performance, the authors argue that proctoring technologies are rooted in problematic assumptions about educational fairness and authoritarian pedagogical approaches. The authors have conducted a qualitative case study in a large-sized, top-tier university in South Korea to investigate the negative impacts of adopting proctoring technologies on student subjectivities, pedagogical relationships and educational outcomes, which have not been fully discussed in previous studies. By utilising Foucault's theorisation of disciplinary governmentality, the authors effectively demonstrate that the binary subjectification of students as cheaters and the cheated has degraded the value of student engagement in university education whilst creating more competitive and distrusting relationships amongst students and between students and teachers. Nevertheless, without challenging the unethical consequences of online proctoring technologies or fundamentally unfair social and educational systems, students willingly accept and adopt them as docile bodies, which has led to educational deterioration rather than innovation.