Today we had a half day of school, on account of some majorly stressful nation-wide test that is taking place tomorrow, called Suneung. It’s kind of like the SATs back in the States, except a MUCH bigger deal. A certain number of Korean students commit suicide each year because of this test. Your performance on a nine-hour exam, one chilly day in November, basically determines the rest of your life.
But, not for me! Today our school had a half-day, since many of the teachers at my school have to help administrate the exam tomorrow, and they went to other schools to do preparations. I assume that’s why we have tomorrow off as well; plus, some of my students are probably taking some sort of practice exam.
After school I stopped by one of the two Family Marts in the town to pick up some Hoegaarden – and ran into several of my students and their friends. “HELLO TEACHER!” Oh, right, the students got the day off too. D’oh!
“Teacher! Teacher!” said one of the kids, holding up a little tub of instant ramen. “I am so hungry, but…” she and her friends murmured about how to translate this next part, and one finally piped up, “no money!” They turned around to go chatter with their friends some more.
“How much is it?” I poked my head around the aisle. The kid who asked looked surprised and then really ecstatic as my intentions dawned on her. “Oh baek won! Uh…uhh…” – here followed some more chatter about how to translate this, and finally they just ended up pointing at the price, 500 won. (They’re in the lower level English class, so they don’t really know numbers after like twenty-five or so.)
I counted the girls, and each of them presented me with a cup of cheap instant ramen. I paid for seven cups, as well as the Pringles I was using as a decoy since I didn’t exactly feel like buying beer in front of the girls. The decoy Pringles probably ended up costing about as much as seven cups of ramen, but the girls were thrilled with the unexpected bounty and yelled “thank you teacher! I love you!” I replied “you’re welcome” and ducked out of there before even more hungry students came in and espied my charity – though it was pretty dang cheap, I didn’t quite have enough cash to buy ramen for the whole school!
I did have enough cash to purchase some proper booze at the other Family Mart across town, unoccupied by students. Thank goodness.
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[...] high school in Korea. The film concept appears to have initially been about the stress induced by a yearly mega-exam called “Suneung.” That’s a fascinating subject in and of itself, but from the video, it seems that the subject [...]
[...] in the life of a Korean high school student: Suneung. I’ve posted a little bit about this day previously. The juniors take a test that’s functionally akin to the SATs, though it has an infinitely [...]
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