Students waiting for the start of the annual college entrance examinations at an exam hall in Seoul, South Korea, on Nov 17, 2022. — AFP
SEOUL (Bloomberg): Large parts of South Korea will come to a standstill on Thursday (Nov 16) as students nationwide prepare to take their all-important university entrance exams, in a country where academic success is seen as paramount.
As more than 500,000 seniors take the equivalent of the SAT from 8.40am to 5.45pm local time, businesses will delay their openings to prevent disruption to students going to test centers. Trading in stocks and foreign exchange will be delayed by an hour to 10am and the stock market will close an hour later than normal. Police will be deployed to assist any students running late for their exams.
Transportation will also be affected. Trains and vehicles traveling around test sites must drive slowly and refrain from using horns, and aircraft takeoffs and landings will stop for 35 minutes in the afternoon during the English listening test. In total, schedules for 94 flights will be adjusted, according to the transportation ministry. Military drills will be also suspended.
The annual suneung exams are a crucial event in South Korea, where attending a prestigious university is seen as the required path for landing a job at a top conglomerate. Families expend huge resources on extra private education, with total household spending on it for primary through high school hitting a record 26 trillion won in 2022, up 11% from a year earlier, according to government data. That accounted for more than 20% of household expenditure.
As scrutiny mounts over the impact of the difficult exams on Korea’s youth, President Yoon Suk Yeol ordered the government in June to take measures to ease parents’ financial burdens and to alleviate pressure on students by only including materials taught in school classrooms in the tests. The suneung exams are known for throwing up "killer questions” that are not covered by textbooks, and many families send their children to tutoring centers called hagwon to prepare for them.
