Test-taking in South Korea

Point me at the SKY

Nov 8th 2013, 11:51 by S.C.S. | SEOUL, The Economist

LUNCHTIME, it is held, would be the optimal time to invade France. Little can distract a
Frenchman from his sacred noonday repast. In South Korea, that opportunity could be the Thursday
in the second week of every November. On November 7th this year stock markets, public offices
and banks all opened an hour late, the army halted aviation exercises and police units marshalled
traffic, as over 650,000 18-year-olds took the annual, state-administered suneung, or College
Scholastic Aptitude Test (CSAT), an eight-hour-long exam that is their main ticket to study at one of
South Korea’s top universities, and thence—for the lucky few—to a coveted job in the government,
the bank or at one of the country’s chaebol, its massive family-owned conglomerates.

The five-part, multiple-choice admissions test is the quintessence of Korea’s Confucian passion for
education, which stretches back to the Goryeo and Chosun dynasties—and hangovers from that time
abound. A traditional sweet, known as yeot, and other sticky treats, such as rice cakes and chocolate,
are given to students for luck, and sometimes plastered on school gates. That harks back to gwago, a
civil-service exam that flourished in the Chosun era, when the names of successful candidates were
posted on government buildings.Suneung takers are therefore encouraged to “stick it”, (though the
English word fighting!, a Korean rallying cry, is now equally popular). The specific term used to
pass the exam—keubchae—is from Chosun times too. And the importance of the state-administered
exam has barely diminished since those days; in a country where some 75% of high-school-leavers
go on to university, many deem the test the chief battle in ibshichonchaeng: entrance-exam war.
Every year, just 2% get into Korea’s prestigious SKY universities, whose nickname is an acronym
for Seoul National University, Korea University and Yonsei University.

The vice-principal of Joongang high school in Seoul says pupils have prepared “almost their entire
life for this day”. Certainly they have spent much of the past 12 years on it. They begin to take
mock suneung at the age of 16 and by their final school year many sit them monthly. Hwang Won-
sang, a bright pupil who hopes to study physics at Korea University, joined a study group that
practised according to the schedule of the exam every day for a week, so that his body could adjust
to its rhythm. For weeks leading up to the day itself, his mother tested a different lunchbox menu
every Saturday, when the school’s canteen closes (in the end he selected abalone congee, said to be
good for stamina and easy to digest). Fearing that a full dose of cough medicine might set off his
allergies, Won-sang began taking small doses every day—in order to build his resistance, in case he
caught a cold on the day of the exam and was forced to take it then. Such is the significance of the
test that invigilators receive special training; high heels, perfume and noisy sweet wrappers are
banned, though every year brings a fresh set of student complaints (including the problem of
invigilators sniffling, sighing or standing in one place for too long).

Mothers are the sole guardians of their children’s education (one rare father, caught praying for his
son’s success at Jogyesa temple in central Seoul—pictured below—was proud to give his wife credit
for “99% of the effort” involved in preparing their child). Many wait outside the school gates until
the moment the exams begin, at which time they leave to pray. Won-sang’s mother planned to visit
church, to spend the day in suneung prayer (the congregation’s prayers follow the exams and breaks

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of the students, to offer them mental support at the right time). She attended special prayers every
day for 100 days in the lead-up to suneung. Another mother at Saemoonan Presbyterian Church said
she wanted to “share the whole exam experience” with her daughter. She has been attending weekly
suneung prayers for five years (her eldest sat the test two years ago). One flustered parent, delayed
in arriving at Jogyesa temple, fretted that she was “too late” to help her son. Many take a more
hands-off approach, though: a mother at Jogyesa temple, who said she had come to calm her nerves,
thought many of the other mothers to be overbearing. She had “simply prepared good meals”,
splashing out a few times, she says, on pricey Korean hanwoo beef.

Despite its excesses, the system is appealingly meritocratic. A majority of Korean youngsters pin
their hopes on the exam. This distinguishes it from gwago, which was always a privilege of the
educated elite. That is chiefly due to Korea’s top ranking in educational provision: 98% of young
Koreans now complete an upper secondary education, according to the OECD. Pupils face the same
set of standardised questions all over the country. Numerous about-turns in the history of the test (it
has weathered about a dozen major changes since 1945, according to the ministry of education) are
mostly the result of repeated efforts to make it fairer.

Lee Myung-bak, a former president, insisted that 1% of students be able to achieve top scores. He
introduced a two-track system, previously reserved for maths, for the test’s other two major papers,
Korean and English, thus allowing students to choose their difficulty level. In 1993 a TV channel,
EBS, began broadcasting extra tuitions specifically for suneung takers; Mr Lee stipulated that 70%
of the test’s content be based on the EBS course (which is now available online too). And the
government offers financial rewards to universities that consider other measures of success:
POSTECH, a top scientific university, selected all of its 2009 undergraduates without reference to
academic records or written tests. There are others that grant a lucky few an unconditional offer on
the basis of their high-school record alone (the method is known as su-shi).

The way the whole country mobilises itself for the future of its young can be arresting. Planes are
rerouted or grounded for half an hour during the afternoon’s English-language listening test. Some
taxi drivers escort suneung students to the test centres for free. Policemen are on hand to whisk
laggards to school on time by motorbike. Even protesters will often suspend their demonstrations for
the day. Mothers praying and chanting in unison at temples countrywide place photographs of their
child wearing a school uniform before them, and sometimes the exam’s timetable too. A teacher of
Korean literature from Paemoon high school in Seoul has travelled to test centres to support his
students every year for the past 25 years. Younger siblings and pupils cheer them on, to the clamour
of cymbals and drums. Students receive lucky gifts of forks (that they may “stab the right answer”)
and toilet paper, whose name in Korean is a homonym for solving questions (notice one young man
has a roll on his desk in the picture)—but avoid seaweed and bananas, lest you slip up.

Yet over-reliance on a single measure of success has distorted the distribution of talent in the
country. Hagwon, after-hours cram schools, persist in making it an unfair race to the top. But
parents’ and teachers’ single biggest frustration with the exam is that pupils only have one shot at it.
Though some choose to retake it the following year, failure carries a heavy stigma (students are not
allowed to count only the better grade). Many parents question the utility of an exam that their
children think “determines their destiny”. Teachers may be saddened to see a scene that is typical at
schools around the country today: pupils throw their textbooks out of the window, dumping them
onto a pile in the school courtyard.