The Absurdity behind the Korean SAT: The Suneung
The notion that the Korean CSAT, commonly known as the Suneung (수능), is a necessary gateway for all students has been so cemented in the South Korean culture that few think about what would happen if it was gone. For, was it not the determination and the drive toward higher education that raised Korea out of its poverty-ridden state after the Korean War? However, what many fail to acknowledge is that hidden under the veil of being one of the highest educated populations in the world, Korea is a country of unfathomable stress and high suicide rates, mainly due to an outdated college admission test.
The first iteration of the Suneung was published in 1963, but it was not until 1983 that the version we see today came into being. Consisting of six sections including Korean, Math, English, History, subordinate subjects (vocational, science, social studies), and a second foreign language, this grueling marathon of an exam takes a total of eight hours to complete. The test starts from 8:40 am and ends at 5:50 pm with only 90 minutes of break, including lunch. Immediately, one can guess the incredible amount of stress that the students are under in preparing for a single day of exams that can potentially make or break your future. Among other things, millions of Korean students suffer from sleep deprivation, anxiety, and depression. But beyond the stress and depression is the tragic but likely conclusion to such a lifestyle: suicide. South Korea has one of the highest suicide rates for teens, with suicide being the leading cause of death for teens since 2007. It is not difficult to correlate this number with the ever-looming pressure of the CSAT exam, and compounded with the unnatural number of cram schools (hagwons) these students must attend, suicide must seem like a release to these teens.
However, the damages done to society by Suneung, as grim as it may be, do not end at the high rates of suicide. On the other end, the societal pressure to invest in education has led Korea’s birth rate to plummet to the lows never seen before. Despite the government's best efforts to encourage more births, the actual number of marriages and subsequent childbirths continue to decrease. South Korea’s birth rate has dropped from 0.84 births per woman in 2021 to 0.81 as of 2021. One only needs to look into the education system of South Korea to explain this phenomenon. To prepare for the Suneung, most Korean students must attend hagwons to stay on top of the competition, which have grown to be a multi-billion dollar industry. As such, these after-school extracurricular classes have become vital, as well as costly, for an average student to stay above the average score. Consequently, the average household requires thousands of dollars to invest into each child every month for them to even consider entering college. In 2018, the average monthly spending in private education for high school students exceeded 300,000 won for the first time. In light of all of these factors and with the more attractive economical path being one without children, prospective parents are choosing to veer off of the path of parenthood, and rightfully so.
Along with the birthrate's damaging implications on the population, the Suneung exam itself is flawed. Park Do-Soon, the former director of the Korea Institute of Curriculum and Evaluation, has been urging the government for the test to be changed. He explains, “It is not the same SAT I designed. It was made to escape the academic ability test, which measures only memorization. But the modern exam has changed countless times and now it eventually became the same as before.” In other words, the test still does not evaluate actual skills, but how well students can solve test questions. Doing well on such exams is not an indication of a mastery of these subjects, but rather a mastery of the Suneung test. For example, take a look at the sample question below.
(Photo Credit: Korea Herald)
Even for native English speakers, this tone and style of English may seem alien. Unnecessarily complex and long, this type of English can be rarely seen outside of this exam. If you were able to find the correct answer (5), congratulations. However, how confident would you be with your answer if you had known that your score on this exam may quite literally dictate your future? At the very least, the looming threat of your parents' expectations is enough to put an unnatural amount of pressure on almost any student, likely hindering their abilities. Unfortunately, this is the inevitable hell that most Korean students face in their life.
Park Do-Soon is not alone in his views of the current Suneung. On November 18th, 2021, the day the Sunueng was administered, over a thousand human rights activists including 324 youths publicly protested against the college entrance exam. They argued that education is built upon the principles of solidarity and fairness, not competition. These protesters were especially sick of the toxic culture that had built itself around this Suneung exam. According to them, students are forced to take part in the hyper-competitive environment around the Suneung that would deepen inequality and distrust among themselves. To quote an anonymous protester, “Our health and happiness are being destroyed, but we continue to push the narrative that ‘your future life depends on how much effort you put into your adolescence.' This only serves to constantly push us all into a desperate battlefield of competition for our future.”
If it hasn’t been made clear yet, the life of the average student in Korea is miserable, to say the least. Sacrificing everything should not be the only way a student can enter a “recognized” college for a promising future. Clearly, the Suneung is at the core of many flaws with the educational system in Korea. Thus, only by amending this exam or finding an alternative can we provide the Korean youths with the opportunity that every student deserves: an equal chance at success.