High school students gathered in classrooms across South Korea on Thursday to take the College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT), or Suneung, the nation’s high-stakes college entrance exam that can have a life-defining impact on young people.

The exam has long been central to the ROK education system, and it has frequently been the target of criticism as to whether it nurtures the skills that the South Korean economy needs to flourish.

But while government reforms in 2022 sought to nurture a more interdisciplinary curriculum, emerging trendssuggest that it has created new testing incentives that have only further reified divisions