"Questions with over 30% correct rate cannot be called killer questions"

Former Evaluation Institute Director Seong Gi-seon MBC Radio Interview
"Not Outside Curriculum Even If Difficulty Is High"

The government selected questions with an EBSi standard correct answer rate exceeding 30% as killer questions (ultra-high difficulty questions), but Seong Gi-seon, former president of the Korea Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation, pointed out that these cannot be considered killer questions.

On the 27th, Seong appeared on MBC Radio's 'Kim Jong-bae's Focus' and said, "(The test) is a five-choice multiple-choice format, so the probability of guessing the answer without reading the question is 20%," adding, "A correct answer rate exceeding 30% cannot be called a killer question."

On the 26th, Oh Seung-geol, Director of the Responsible Education Policy Office at the Ministry of Education, is presenting examples of killer questions from the College Scholastic Ability Test at the Government Seoul Office in Jongno-gu, Seoul. Photo by Dongju Yoon doso7@

Seong explained, "Killer questions are designed to assess the ability to understand and think about sentences expressed through new passages," and that they are not created outside the curriculum. He also added that most of the questions historically called killer questions were based on EBS textbooks.

He said, "While it may seem to the general public that excessive knowledge is being tested, it is not about knowledge but about reading new passages and measuring critical thinking skills and students' literacy abilities," adding, "Therefore, unlike literature, various types of non-literary passages can be used."

Seong said, "Currently, about 50% of the questions are indirectly linked to EBS textbooks. Indirect linkage means not linking the exact same passage or question, but mixing passages that appeared there or indirectly linking tables, data, or other evidence from those passages," and added, "This means that similar passages can be included even if they are not the exact same passages."

Seong pointed out that it cannot be assumed that high-difficulty questions are created outside the curriculum. He said, "There was a case where civic groups sued the Korea Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation, claiming that the CSAT questions were too difficult and thus outside the curriculum, causing them harm," adding, "The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, which concluded that although the difficulty can be high, there is no basis to consider it outside the curriculum just because of the difficulty, after reviewing each question."

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