One Day in November, Korea Shuts Down
the Day of the Korean College Entrance Exam, the Korean SAT
It’s that time of the year in Korea—middle of November. It’s gone back and forth, but currently it’s the 3rd Thursday of November, the day of the Korean Scholastic Aptitude Test (대학수학능력시험), or “수능” (soo-neung) for short, the Korean College Entrance Exam.
Needless to say, an enormously impactful day for the students who are taking the exam (administered only once a year), but this day goes far beyond the students and their parents. The entire nation goes on alert and practically shuts down for about 10 hours. This is not a joke. I’m being totally serious when I say this.
A case in point.
This is an article from a few years back, but this applies every year on the day of the exam. The article says,
During the 35-minute English Listening Comprehension Portion of the Exam (from 1:05 to 1:40pm), All Flights are Prohibited to Take Off or Land. The ones that are already in the air are ordered to circle at a minimum altitude of 3,000 meters (10,000 feet) and wait for further instructions.
Again, this is not a joke. All airports in Korea are essentially shut down for 35 minutes. And everyone is okay with this because the entire Korean population knows how much these kids have suffered for the 12 years of schooling and they don’t want any undue noise influencing a listening test. I tear up just thinking about those poor kids who had to endure so much in their young lives. Thankfully for me, my family immigrated to America when I was 14, but my wife did live through it.
** Speaking as a parent who has 2 kids in college and a high school senior who’s writing college applications now, I can attest to the notion that things are getting pretty bad here in the United States too.
The airport shutdown, while almost unfathomable by American standards, is only a part of it. For this one day, all adult workers with the so-called 9 to 5 jobs (more like 8 to 6) are REQUIRED to report to work one full hour later than usual to delay or prevent any traffic jams, especially in and around Seoul. Banks and the stock market open late too on this day.
There is a dedicated team of police vehicles that are on a stand-by for those students who need an emergency ride to their test centers. Taxi drivers ask for police escort if the students are running late. And yes, the police are permitted to and do use the sirens. Korean drivers are notorious for not pulling over to the side whenever there’s an ambulance or any other police sirens, but on this day, drivers do pull over. And no one honks their horns for the 10-hour test period.
And when the examinees get to the test center usually before 7:45am, there are high school juniors and sophomores lined up, waiting to cheer on the seniors. (This cheering section isn’t something you will see at the Cal State University at Dominguez Hills campus, where my youngest took her SAT three months ago.) This became a tradition, but students couldn’t do this for the past 3 years because of the pandemic.
1st and 2nd year students at Joong-dong High School (중동고, one of the oldest boys’ high schools in Korea) in Seoul are famous for the pep rally they perform for the seniors the day before the 수능. This almost looks like the Maori haka dance of New Zealand.
And from 8am to 6pm, the neighborhoods that surround test centers go deathly quiet. The rest of the country also walks on thin ice for the 10 hours, I’ve heard.
No military exercises and movements, nor any construction work for the same 10-hour period.
Many parents pray before and during the exam. And some of them…
… wait outside the test centers for the entire duration of the test praying and hoping.
This (one stinking) test is THAT important for most of the students in Korea. It is a tragic situation where the exam results become a matter of life and death—no hyperbole. Circle back to my posting about why young Korean couples are refusing to get married and have kids (lowest birth rate in the world by a wide margin).
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But when the test is over, it is party time! None of the “let’s smash things” or “loot that store” shenanigans but “let’s go see a show” or “let’s go to norae-bang (노래방, singing rooms) and sing our hearts out” or “let’s pig out at a restaurant” kind. All municipalities and most of the local businesses offer hefty discounts (30~50% off) to free stuff (like movie, show, and concert tickets) to all examinees with the exam registration ticket. The broadcast companies even plan special concerts for the examinees. It’s like the whole country is throwing a party for the high school seniors and jae-soo-saeng (재수생).
** BTW, Korean academic year starts in March and ends officially in February, but in all practicality, ends by mid-December.
Jae-soo-saeng is one of those words that cannot be translated because there is no concept of it in US. The word literally translates into “students who are taking the exam again.” In US, what happens to a high school graduate who wanted to go to college but couldn’t for whatever reason? There are options, right? The biggest being the community college system, where you spend 2 years (or more) studying the general education requirements and transfer to 4-year universities. No such system in Korea (there is, but not very well setup nor utilized). So, if you were rejected from the university you wanted to go to, you spend another year studying and try it again. If rejected again, then you spend another year doing the same thing. Things have changed a bit over the years, but there was a time when 3-soo-saeng and 4-soo-saeng were common. My understanding is that there still are quite a few of them.
Again, a reference to a TV show called Infinite Challenge (무한도전). One of the cast members Jung Joon-ha (정준하) admitted that he was once a 4-soo-saeng and was ridiculed for it, all in good fun, in the show over the years. Jung remembered that when he was a 3-soo-saeng, there was a 6-soo-saeng at the private tutoring institute he was enrolled at (hagwon, remember this word?)
And there was an episode of Infinite Challenge where the cast members were assigned to cheerleading squads at Yonsei and Korea Universities. Jung looked as though he was getting emotional when he received an honorary student ID card from the Korea University president. At that moment, it wasn’t a comedy show anymore.
In conclusion, it’s not a very pleasant situation for all involved. Whenever government tries to change things, it’s always met with bitter challenges from all sorts of interest groups, including the parents and teachers. The system hasn’t changed in any meaningful way for decades.
The studying is featured a lot in K-dramas, but never the test day. It's kind of sweet how the whole country pulls together for the students. But I like our system in the US better.