South Korean Students Files Lawsuit After Exam Ends 90 Second Earlier
A group of students from South Korea is suing the government because their college exam ended 90 seconds earlier than the actual schedule. The students are asking for the cost of an year’s study which is needed to retake the exam, demanding 20 million won ($15,400) each. The error has impacted the other students’ exams, said the lawyer.
South Korea is infamous for its college admission exam. Their eight hour long back-to-back exams on several subjects is known as Suneung. Suneung is said to be one of the hardest exams in the world. The country takes number of measures to keep the students concentrated in exams, like closing down the airspace of the country and delaying the opening of stock-marketing.
The lawsuit against the government was filed on Tuesday. At least 39 students claim that bell rang 90 seconds earlier at the test site in Seoul, the capital city, during the examination of Korean – the first subject of the exam. Some students protested immediately but said the invigilators took the papers. The teachers understood the mistake by the next session and gave one and half minutes back to the students, but were only allowed to fill the blank columns and not correct any previously filled columns.
Yonhap news agency reported that some students were upset to the point they could not concentrate on the rest of the exam. Some even gave up and went home. Kim Woo-suk told to the local media that the education authorities did not apologise. KBS, a Public broadcaster quoted officials as saying that the supervisor misread the time.
This is not the first time students are South Korea filed lawsuit complaining against the bell ringing earlier. In April this year, a court in Seoul has awarded 7 million won ($5,250) to students who claimed that in 2021 Suneung examination, the bell two minutes earlier.
In 2012, a man in China was awarded with one-year suspension for ringing the bell four minutes and 48 seconds earlier during the national entrance exam which was held at a school on Hunan province.
(With inputs from BBC)
