Minister of Education: "Killer Questions Will Be Strictly Excluded Starting from This Year's CSAT"

Lee Ju-ho, Deputy Prime Minister for Social Affairs and Minister of Education CBS Interview
"Anxiety Marketing Pushes Children into Private Education"

Lee Ju-ho, Deputy Prime Minister for Social Affairs and Minister of Education, announced that 'killer questions' (ultra-difficult questions) will be thoroughly excluded from this year's College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT).

On the 22nd, Lee appeared on CBS Radio's 'Kim Hyun-jung's News Show' and said, "I am truly outraged that there are questions twisted so intricately that even professors cannot solve them, covering content not addressed at all in the curriculum," adding, "We deeply reflect on such issues and will definitely remove them."

Lee stated, "We are currently sorting out which questions among the CSAT problems from the past three years and the recent June mock exam are killer questions," and added, "We plan to disclose all of them when we announce the private education measures on the 26th."

Education Minister Lee Ju-ho is briefing on measures to enhance the competitiveness of public education at the Government Seoul Office in Jongno-gu, Seoul, on the 21st. Photo by Dongju Yoon doso7@

Regarding concerns that excluding killer questions might lead to an easier CSAT, Lee said, "The argument that only killer questions can differentiate students represents the interests of private education, not the views of educational experts in pedagogy."

He continued, "Ultimately, this kind of fear marketing is pushing students toward private education," and said, "(Securing differentiation) is definitely possible within the public education system and is done in all countries, so I wonder why only in Korea killer questions are considered necessary and why removing them is seen as promoting private education. Such logic keeps coming up," adding, "I think we need to strongly confront this."

Regarding concerns that students, feeling anxious due to variables like the exclusion of killer questions just five months before the CSAT, will turn again to private education, he said, "That is also the logic of the private education market," and added, "No system has changed at all."

He explained, "The plan is to set questions within public education, so I don't understand why this is said to promote private education," and said, "For example, now that killer questions are being removed, people say semi-killer questions will appear, and that students will have to go to academies to learn those, but these are all statements made by private academy experts."

Regarding the private education measures to be announced next week, he said, "The most important direction is to absorb much of the educational content currently provided in private education into public education," adding, "We will ensure that parents do not have to spend large amounts on private education and that students can be educated with confidence within the public education system without being pushed into private education."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.