South Korea’s famously soul-crushing college entrance exam — the Suneung — just hit a new level of absurdity, after the 2025/26 English section was so baffling it sent students spiraling, parents screaming, and the test’s chief straight out the resignation door. That’s right: the exam was such a philosophical word salad that even the man in charge said, “Yeah, my bad,” and quit.
🧠 Multiple Choice or Mental Breakdown? The English Test Heard Round the Nation
Imagine studying for years, attending hagwons until midnight, giving up sleep, hobbies, and possibly your will to live — only to sit down and find an English exam sprinkled with abstract philosophy, dense comprehension, and questions that make Kafka look like Dr. Seuss.
“Insanely difficult” was the polite way students put it. The less polite versions involved screaming into voids and comparing the exam to dark magic conjured by sadistic grammarians. The number of students hitting top scores plummeted. So did the public’s faith in the Korea Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation, which promptly offered up its head honcho, Oh Seung-keol, as a ritual sacrifice to angry parents.
But this isn’t just about one rogue test. In South Korea, the Suneung is a national spectacle. Flights are grounded during listening sections. Police escort late students. It’s Hunger Games meets grammar quiz, and the prize is your future. So when the system breaks, so does the country’s collective sanity.
Reformers are now calling to scrap or radically change the exam by 2040. Translation: “Hey kids, just survive 15 more years of this academic Thunderdome, and we might think about doing things differently!”
Until then, brace for another year of sleep-deprived 17-year-olds trying to guess whether Plato or TOEFL wrote their English test. 📚😵
🔥 Challenges 🔥
What’s the point of a national exam if it’s designed to demoralize 99% of the population? 🤯 Should academic success really depend on outwitting an existential riddle in English? Sound off in the blog comments — whether you’ve taken the Suneung, taught to it, or just enjoy a good ol’ fashioned educational meltdown.
👇 Drop your rants, roasts, and reform ideas below. Like, share, and tag someone who still has flashbacks from their high school English exams.
The best comments will be featured in the next issue of the magazine. 📝🔥
Chameleon Magazine 
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