More than half a million students took the grueling Suneung exam this year. Image: EPA
South Korean students file lawsuit following teacher’s 90-second exam cutoff.
The college admission exam in South Korea concluded ninety seconds before the stipulated time, and a group of students is suing the government over it.
Their individual requests amount to twenty million won ($15,400; £12,000), which covers the expense of a year’s study for the retake exam.
The remaining tests were impacted by the mistake, according to the students’ attorney.
Suneung, the well-known college admission exam in the nation, consists of multiple-subject tests taken consecutively over the course of eight hours.
There is a lot at stake on the Suneung, which is among the world’s most difficult tests.
It decides how people are placed in colleges, how they get employment, and even how they end up dating in the future.
Delaying the opening of the stock market and restricting the country’s airspace are just two of the many measures implemented to assist pupils concentrate during the annual event.
On December 8th, the results of the exam for this year were announced.
At least 39 students have taken legal action, claiming that the bell rung early at a test site in Seoul, the capital, during Korean, the first topic of the exam. Their lawsuit was filed on Tuesday.
Despite the students’ instant protests, some claim that their superiors proceeded to confiscate their papers.
During lunch, the teachers restored the lost time, but students could only mark the remaining blank columns on their sheets and could not edit their previous responses; this was done since the professors caught the error before the following session began.
The pupils claimed they were unable to concentrate on the remaining portion of the test due to their extreme emotions, according to Yonhap news agency. It was said that some of them just went back home.
Local reporters were informed by their lawyer, Kim Woo-suk, that the education officials had not extended an apology.
The head of that particular testing site mistook the timing, according to sources cited by public broadcaster KBS.
Students have filed lawsuits in the past due to bells sounded too early.
Students who asserted they were unfairly disadvantaged on the 2021 Suneung exam due to the fact that their bell rung around two minutes early were granted 7 million won ($5,250; £4,200) by a Seoul court in April.
In some nations, the price can be significantly greater.
A Chinese guy in 2012 received a year of suspended punishment for going four minutes and forty-eight seconds ahead of schedule on the national college admission test at a school in the province of Hunan.