Military training was suspended, flights rescheduled and emergency calls reserved for latecomers Thursday as hundreds of thousands of South Korean students sat a crucial college entrance examination.
As every year, the focus of the education-obsessed country narrowed for one day to ensuring the smooth running of the exam, seen as a defining moment that can hold the key to everything from future careers to marriage prospects.
Police cars and motorbikes in cities across South Korea were on standby, available for any students needing to make a late dash to take their seats before the exam began at 8:40 am (2340 GMT Wednesday).
More than 668,500 students, 25,000 fewer than last year, took the day-long standardised College Scholastic Ability Test at 1,191 centres nationwide, the education ministry said.
Aviation authorities said 83 flights would be rescheduled to avoid noisy landings and take-offs during language listening tests in the morning and afternoon.
The stock market’s opening and closing was delayed by an hour while many government offices and private companies opened late to ease rush-hour traffic so that students could arrive at test centres on time.
In South Korea’s hyper-competitive education system, high marks in the exam are essential for entry to top universities, which is in turn crucial to securing prestigious jobs.
News networks fell over themselves to offer recipes for lunch boxes to be carried by the students which are readily digestible and supposedly helpful for maintaining concentration.
Many stressed-out students spent sleepless nights before the exam as parents crowded churches and Buddhist temples to pray for good results.
In the southeastern city of Daegu, a 21-year-old student feeling the pressure of the looming exam reportedly jumped off an 18-storey apartment building to his death on Wednesday.
The crushing pressure on teenagers to perform well in exams is blamed for dozens of suicides every year that generally peak around the time of the annual entrance exam.
For nearly all their school lives, South Korean students study late into the night — often at costly, private cram schools — to stay ahead in the rat race for admission to top universities.
S. Korea falls silent as students sit key exam
