In June, the government and the Ministry of Education announced measures aimed at reducing private education. The main goal of the plan is to shift towards a public education-centered environment by curbing excessive reliance on private education. Among the proposed changes, the decision to abolish the 'killer questions' in the College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT)[1], has sparked significant controversy. The term ‘killer questions’ refers to extremely challenging questions within the CSAT. While the government announced the exclusion of 'killer questions', this decision has triggered strong opposition from various quarters including the education sector, students, and parents. With fierce disagreement, the debate about abolishing ‘killer questions’ in the CSAT is ongoing.

The most challenging questions in the CSAT, known as ‘killer questions,’ have been regularly criticized. To address these concerns, the government has decided to abolish the killer questions from the CSAT. These killer questions are so challenging that they promote reliance on private education and exacerbate the educational divide that cannot be overcome solely through public education. Additionally, they tend to have favor in certain students depending on their choice of subjects. For these reasons, the elimination of killer questions from the CSAT is necessary.

 Firstly, the killer questions exacerbate the reliance on private education. Designed to be extremely challenging, these questions surpass the level that public education provides.  Consequently, the students are forced to seek out supplementary education, usually prominent exam preparation centers, so that they can acquire the skills to handle killer questions. According to the "KEDI POLL 2022” by the Korean Educational Development Institute in 2022, one out of five parents of students in elementary, middle, and high school felt that while the cost of private education is too high, its effectiveness is significant. Furthermore, 40.5% of parents responded that private education is necessary even if their children were capable of independent study. Secondly, killer questions intensify the educational divide. Many students attend large-scale exam-preparation centers to tackle killer questions of the CSAT. However, such institutes are concentrated in certain areas of Seoul. It generates a divide in access to quality education for students who don’t live in metropolitan regions. This educational divide becomes evident in the regular admission process based on CSAT results. In 2022, students from affluent educational backgrounds, especially in areas like Gangnam where exam-preparation centers cluster, had an acceptance rate nearly three times higher in the CSAT admission process for entrance to prestigious universities and medical schools compared to those who entered the early admission process, which doesn’t count the CSAT scores as the main factor. The fact that students from regions with more developed private education institutes tend to have better results in the CSAT shows the reinforcement of the educational divide depending on the geographical area. Thirdly, the killer questions fail to measure the abilities that the CSAT aims to assess properly. For instance, killer questions in the Korean language section include non-literary passages covering subjects such as humanities, social sciences, science, technology, and the arts, with the intention of evaluating reading comprehension skills. However, these passages can favor students who have studied the specific subjects related to the passage. 2023 CSAT Korean language section involved a passage combining the concept of 'basal metabolic rate' from science and 'the method of least squares' from social science. In the 2019 CSAT Korean language section, a passage on Newton’s universal gravitation hypothesis also requires mathematical interpretation. Analysis suggests that such killer questions, requiring mathematical reasoning, would have provided an advantage to top-tier natural science students. Additionally, many students struggled with these concepts, leading to low discrimination, and failing to accurately measure reading comprehension skills. Consequently, these killer questions in the CSAT are not appropriate for testing reading comprehension skills.

The killer questions in the CSAT have been out of the realm of public education and exacerbated the gap caused by private education. Furthermore, killer questions in Korean language section tend to favor specific students, making it difficult to perceive the assessment of scholastic abilities for all students as equitable. For these reasons, the killer questions in the CSAT should be abolished. While the elimination of killer questions alone may not be sufficient to address the prevalent issue of excessive private education in South Korea. However, it can serve as a starting point to anticipate improvements in other systems and environments.