SEOUL, December 14 (AJP) -South Korea’s notoriously punishing college entrance exam has once again drawn global attention—this time not only for its difficulty, but for the language used by Western media to describe it.
Following widespread backlash over this year’s English section of the Suneung, the country’s high-stakes college entrance exam, the head of the testing authority resigned, acknowledging that the questions were excessively difficult.
The episode quickly became international news, with outlets such as the BBC and The New York Times portraying the exam as a symbol of extreme academic pressure in South Korea.
The BBC described the English test as being “like deciphering an ancient script,” echoing complaints from students who said the dense passages and abstract concepts were nearly impenetrable. The broadcaster highlighted questions based on Immanuel Kant’s philosophy of law and a technical passage on video game perception, noting that some students called the exam “insane.”
The New York Times focused on the institutional fallout. It reported that Oh Seung-geol, head of the Korea Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation (KICE), resigned after issuing a public apology, admitting that the English test “did not meet the appropriate difficulty level.”
Just over 3 percent of test takers earned the top English grade this year, down from about 6 percent the previous year. For the BBC, the figure illustrated how the test crossed the line from rigorous to unreasonable. For the Times, it reinforced longstanding criticism that exam difficulty often undermines government pledges to curb so-called “killer questions” and reduce reliance on private tutoring.
Oh Seung-geol, head of the Korea Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation (KICE), which administers the exam, stepped down after widespread criticism from students, parents and educators.
“We sincerely accept the criticism that the difficulty of the questions was inappropriate,” Oh said, acknowledging that the test “fell short” despite undergoing multiple rounds of review.
The controversy centered on dense, abstract passages that many students found unnecessarily convoluted. Among the most daunting were questions drawing on Immanuel Kant’s philosophy of law and a passage using technical language from game design theory.
One widely discussed question, worth three points, asked students to determine where a sentence about “the virtual bodily space of the avatar” should be inserted into a paragraph describing perception in video games. The passage was later identified as an excerpt from Game Feel, a game design book by Steve Swink—used without broader context.
Online criticism was swift. One Reddit user described the writing as “fancy smart talking,” while another called it “awful writing that doesn’t convey a concept well.”
Held every November, the Suneung is an eight-hour marathon that shapes not only university admissions but also future job prospects, income levels and even marriage outcomes. Students answer around 200 questions across Korean, mathematics, English, and other subjects.
Since the Suneung was introduced in 1993, only four of its 12 chief administrators have completed their full three-year terms. While most resignations followed factual errors in questions, Oh is the first to step down solely over excessive difficulty—underscoring just how politically and socially sensitive the exam remains.
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