South Korea to halt flights, delay work hours for 25-minute English test

South Korea will briefly halt takeoffs and landings, ask offices and businesses to start work later and add subway trains on Nov. 19 so 551,864 test-takers can reach the national college entrance exam on time and sit it undisturbed.

The Ministry of Education announced the measures on Oct. 20 for the College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT), known in Korean as suneung, which will run from 8:40 a.m. to 5:45 p.m. at 1,312 test centers nationwide, Yonhap news agency reported.

To prevent traffic congestion, the government will ask public institutions, including government offices, and private businesses to have staff start work at 10 a.m. or later.

Subway trains in the greater Seoul area will run more frequently between 6 a.m. and 8:10 a.m., and emergency transport vehicles will be deployed to assist students in need.

To keep the English listening section quiet, airplane and helicopter takeoffs and landings will be prohibited from 1:10 p.m. to 1:35 p.m., and military exercises involving artillery fire and tank movements will be put on hold.

"In order for all test-takers to fully demonstrate their abilities, we will provide full support along with other government branches," Education Minister Choi Kyo-jin said.

The exam is widely seen as a major life event in South Korea, where college admission can heavily influence career prospects and social standing.

Last year, flights at all airports, including Incheon International Airport, were banned from landing or taking off between 1:05 p.m. and 1:40 p.m. during the listening section, a decision that affected 140 flights, Reuters reported. Financial markets and offices opened an hour later than usual.

This year, test-takers caught wearing smart glasses with artificial intelligence features will have their results voided and be barred from the following year's exam, whether or not they used the devices, under guidelines from the Korea Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation, the Seoul Economic Daily reported.

Carrying the devices into a test site without handing them to a proctor will also void a student's exam. The rules follow cases of AI glasses caught during essay exams at Yonsei University and the University of Seoul.

Two teachers' groups, the Korean Teachers and Education Workers Union and the Korean Federation of Teachers' Associations, criticized the smart-glasses rules on Oct. 20, saying they shift an excessive burden onto proctors, who lack specialized equipment to identify the devices and are left to handle disputes with test-takers, the newspaper reported.

The federation called for clear verification criteria and measures to protect proctors from complaints.