According to an investigation by Hankook Ilbo, based on interviews with 12 former leaders of the Korea Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation (KICE) and exam creators, the CSAT is currently overloaded with technical and policy demands.

AI models like ChatGPT, capable of completing the exam in just 15 minutes, pose an unprecedented challenge for those in charge of setting standards.

Kim Chang-won, a former chairman of the grading committee, admitted: "We are reaching technical limits." The current pressure involves ensuring a regulated content ratio while constantly innovating to avoid overlap with hundreds of predictive exams generated by test prep centers' AI.

Controversy erupted in 2023 when the government demanded the removal of "extremely difficult" questions to ease pressure on candidates. However, experts believe this move did not make the exam easier; instead, it introduced more trick questions.

Professor Sung Ki-sun of Catholic University of Korea revealed that with the disappearance of "killer questions," the exam creation committee had to maintain a certain level of difficulty to differentiate candidates. As a result, the number of difficult questions in each exam increased from 7 to 12-13, frustrating candidates.

"Mathematics helps select students for medical schools, while Korean determines who gets into medical schools in Seoul. These decisions sometimes depend on just one or two questions," said a teacher who participated in exam creation.

Consequently, the Korean language exam featured many questions focused on wordplay or twisting reasoning, requiring students to scrutinize every detail, such as whether a character "said" or merely "whispered." The English exam also sparked debate. The percentage of candidates achieving a perfect score was only 3.11% last year, the lowest since 2018.

South Korea's university English exam criticized as 'ridiculous'

A candidate prays during the university entrance exam in Incheon, mid-November 2025. Photo: Joint Press Corps

In this context, the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education recently proposed expanding admissions based on high school transcripts to reduce exam burdens, aiming to abolish CSAT completely by 2040.

Professor Park Do-soon, the first chairman of KICE, believes the CSAT has deviated too far from its original design.

"We once considered this a basic aptitude test, not a ranking tool," he said, regretting that scores now serve as the sole measure to rank universities.

The CSAT, or Suneung in Korean, is one of the world's most stressful university entrance exams, lasting 8 hours. The exam consists of six sections: Korean, Mathematics, English, History, a choice of natural science or social studies subjects, and a second foreign language. Candidates must answer multiple-choice or short-answer questions.

Last year, over 550,000 candidates took the exam, the highest number in 7 years. During the English listening test, all domestic flights were temporarily halted, while financial markets and many offices opened later to allow candidates to reach their test centers on time.

Huyen Trang (according to The Korea Times, The Korea Herald, Yonhap News)