Among Korean dramas, there is a drama that has gained huge popularity among the public, with a maximum viewership of 23.8 percent, despite being on cable TV. It is JTBC's black comedy drama, SKY Castle. SKY Castle deals with one percent of the upper class's college entrance education, the desire of parents in it, and the irrational means of choosing to fulfill their desires. Watching the drama, you can see scenes that can be seen in Korea's admission culture, but some of scenes of college entrance culture that make me wonder, "Did they do something like that?" and “Do they have to do that?"

Although there are exaggerated parts due to the characteristics of the drama, there are several real-life incidents that reveal the dark sides of the admissions culture in Korea. Let's take a look at those incidents.

The first dark side of Korean entrance exams is the leak of test papers. These are incidents that led to the mistaken perception that if the paper leaked, the test taker would achieve high grades and good results in the entrance exams. There is also an incident in which a star lecturer named Mr. Sohn leaked the SAT problems. The prosecution found that Sohn exploited the fact that he could know the test results in advance by using the time difference between countries. Although he was found not guilty due to the lack of credibility of evidence that Sohn actually posted the answers, the ETS survey found that some students took the test in 2007 and that all 900 applicants in Korea had their grades canceled.

One of the most recent test paper leaks was the test papers of twin sisters at Sookmyung Girls' High School in 2018. Twins attending Sookmyung Girls' High School, who were ranked 121st and 59th in the first grade, surprisingly won first place in the liberal arts and the natural sciences at the same time. A petition with the Gangnam Seocho Education Support Agency was filed regarding the suspicion of leaks. What's more suspicious is that the twin daughters’ father was the school's head of education and after the police investigation, the police announced that her father leaked the test papers five times in total from 2017 to 2018.

The second problem is education polarization based on income. According to the Ministry of Education and the National Statistical Office's ‘2017 Survey on Private Education Costs for Primary and Secondary Schools,’ the higher the household income, the greater the participation rate and spending on private education. 83.6 percent of households with an average monthly income of 7 million won or more spent 455,000 won on private education per month. Only 43.1 percent of households with household income of less than 2 million won per month took part in private education, while spending on private education was 93,000 won, which is only about one fifth of the upper class.

The drama “SKY Castle” features the highest-level exam coordinator for children of the bank's VVIP. You can think of the exam coordinator as a private tutor who takes care of everything from school studies to living conditions and preparing for college entrance exams. Do you think the college entrance exam coordinator exists in the real world? Kang Sung-tae, head of the Internet lecture company "The God of Study," said on YouTube that there has been an event for VIP and VVIP targets similar to what was shown in “SKY Castle.” It is usually conducted in the form of a lecture but there is no such case of bidding for a teacher like in the drama. “Exam coordinator” is not the name in the drama, as most of the teachers are called managers, coaches, or consultants, but these days the position is also called a “mentor.” Kang Sung-tae said he has actually been offered a job as a college coordinator. He said that politicians and businessmen have contacted him through professors and seniors who know the subject.

Finally, a self-introduction letter is ghost-written. There are many institutions that give performance assessment essays to middle and high school students. There was a recent official confirmation of the performance assessment being ghost-written. The Education Office found that the report written by a university student was submitted for a performance evaluation for a senior high school student in Daejeon, who received a perfect score. The actual writer of the student's assessment task was a college student working part-time at an educational consulting firm. The consulting firm called for the preparation of an answer sheet for reference almost every month. The college student found it strange and reported it to the Anti-Corruption & Civil Rights Commission.

In addition to ghostwriting of performance assessment essays, there are examples of ghostwriting of self-introduction essays for universities. According to data received by the Korean Council for University Education, more and more cases of self-introduction essays were rejected each year because they were found to have been plagiarized during the rolling admission. The decision to fail is made through a similar search system, which compares the similarity between self-introduction and other writings. In 2015, 1,261 people dropped out, in 2016, 1,390 people dropped out and in 2017, 1,406 people dropped out.

In this article, we covered the dark aspects of the Korean college entrance culture: the leakage of test papers, the polarization of education based on income, and the ghostwriting of essays. In addition to these, there are other problems, such as regional education polarization, and the common unsatisfying way many teachers teach their classes. South Korea is uniquely sensitive to university rankings and many Koreans have preconceptions about these rankings. Therefore, students and their parents devote themselves to the entrance exams and their scores. However, no matter how important the goal of getting into the desired university is, it cannot be justified to use illegal and unreasonable means to achieve it. In the short term, it seems like it has achieved its goal, but in the long term, it will cause problems. Remember that students are not losers or winners as evaluated by their grade in admission culture, but are all precious beings.

출처:

"문제 유출하면 스타 강사"…반복되는 SAT 문제유출, 한국대학신문(UNN), (2013. 02. 24), http://news.unn.net/news/articleView.html?idxno=120841
“사교육비 역대 최고... '교육 양극화' 도 커진다”, economic review, (2018. 03. 15), http://www.econovill.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=333722

“대학생 리포트가 '수행평가'로 둔갑…'대필' 사실로”, MBC news, (2018. 12. 17) http://imnews.imbc.com/replay/2018/nwdesk/article/5071991_22663.html

“대학 입학 자기소개서 표절 지난해 1406명 불합격,” 문화일보, (2018. 09. 12), http://www.munhwa.com/news/view.html?no=2018091201071303016001

Shim Hyebeen  ahdishim@naver.com

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