The annual university entrance exam Suneung, often considered to be the most important exam in one’s life, has taken place on November 14th. This year, 508,030 people registered to take the exam, 1,791(0.4%) less than that of last year. Of the 50 thousand examinees, around 28% are predicted to be repeaters(재수생), an all-time high in the last 22 years. The statistics indicate that the current trend of the proportion of repeaters increasing despite the total number of examinees decreasing will likely continue.
This year’s Suneung maintained the course of last year’s in terms of the widening gap between the elective subjects due to the liberal arts, natural sciences integrated test system introduced last year. Accordingly, the problems for the Korean language and the Mathematics section will be in the form of “common subject problems + elective subject problems.”In the Korean Language section, Reading(독서) and Literature(문학) are the common subjects while Speech and Writing(화법과 작문) and Language and Media(언어와 매체) are the elective subjects. In the Math section, Math I(수학 I) and Math II(수학 II) are the common subjects, while Calculus(미적분학), Statistics(확률과 통계), and Geometry(기하) are the elective subjects. The original purpose of implementing the elective subjects system was to expand the opportunity for students to choose subjects according to their interests, strength and career paths. However, because of the disparities in standard scores for the elective subjects, there is a growing tendency for students to choose elective subjects based on how advantageous the particular subject is. As a result, more students are gravitating towards subjects that tend to have higher standard scores, such as Language and Media and Calculus. In fact, according to Jongro Academy, the proportion of students selecting Language and Media increased from 27.8% last year to 34.1% this year, while the proportion rose from 37.1% to 43.7% for Calculus. With such predictions, it seems inevitable that the issue of whether the new system is unfair towards humanities students will again rise.
Another major aspect of this year’s Suneung was certainly COVID-19. Identical to last year, examinees were mandated to wear masks while taking the exam, with the specific types of masks varying by type of examination room. In the case of the general examination room, it was required that masks other than the mesh or valve type be worn, and was recommended that examinees wear KF94, KF80, KF-AD, or surgical masks. On the other hand, test-takers in separate examination rooms were required to wear masks KF80 or above, and those in separate test sites were mandated to wear masks of KF90 or above. Unlike last year when examinees who had contracted COVID-19 had to take the exam in a hospital, this year, examinees were assigned to a separate testing site to take the exam in a classroom. As with last year, this year, examinees had to set up the three-sided partitions only during lunchtime. In order to minimize the spread of the virus during Suneung week, schools were recommended to switch to remote learning. As such, all the students except for the seniors in Cheongshim International Academy had also switched to online learning for the week.
In support of the seniors, there was a special Suneung meal for lunch on the 10th. It included pork belly, abalone porridge, tteokbokki, banquet noodles, popcorn shrimp, tangerines, ice cream, and pumpkin taffy. The pumpkin taffy especially embodies the support everyone in Cheongshim has for the seniors as it symbolizes wishing for acceptance.