South Korea’s Suneung exam ended 90 seconds earlier and students filed a lawsuit against government seeing 20 million won in compensation.
A group of students from South Korea is taking legal action against the government. They say their important college entrance exam ended 90 seconds too soon, according to the BBC. Each student is asking for 20 million won ($15,326) in compensation, which is the same as a year’s tuition for a retake. The lawyer says this mistake affected how well all the students did in the rest of their exams.
This college admission test, known as Suneung, is a tough eight-hour marathon with different subjects in many papers. It’s one of the hardest exams globally, deciding who gets into universities, job opportunities, and even future relationships. Every year, they do things like close the country’s airspace and delay the stock market opening to help students concentrate during this crucial test.
More than half a million students took the Suneung exam this year, and they got the results on December 8.
The lawsuit, filed by at least 39 students, talks about a bell ringing too early during the Korean language part, the first section of the exam in the capital city, Seoul. Even though students protested, the supervisors still collected the answer sheets. Teachers admitted the mistake before the next session, and they gave back one and a half minutes during lunch break.
But the students could only leave blank spaces on their papers and couldn’t change any of their existing answers. This error upset the students so much that they couldn’t focus on the rest of the exam, and some even went home.
Lawyer Kim Woo-suk, representing the students, says the education authorities haven’t said sorry. Public broadcaster KBS quoted officials who said the supervisor at that test center misunderstood the time.
In a similar situation in April, students got compensation because a bell rang too early in the 2021 Suneung exam. In 2012, in China, a person got a one-year suspended sentence for ringing the bell 4 minutes and 48 seconds too early during the national college entrance exam in Hunan province.
