Jung Min-ho has worked as a staff writer at The Korea Times since 2012, mostly covering social and political issues. He currently belongs to the Politics & City Desk where he covers topics such as health, labor and human rights. Prior to joining the team, he was responsible for covering North Korea and sports. His article about a biosecurity breach of Middle East respiratory syndrome won him an award from the Korea Science Journalists Association in 2016. He is also the co-author of the book, "Medical Pioneers of Korea" (2019). He served as the head of the international relations committee at the Journalists Association of Korea from 2021 to 2023.
Korea considers using AI to grade CSAT essay answers
Students study at a hagwon in southern Seoul, April 30. Newsis
By Jung Min-ho
College entrance exam reform to introduce extended-response queries
Korea’s top education policy body is weighing the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in order to safeguard fairness in evaluating essay-style answers, as the government moves to overhaul the College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT).
The presidential National Education Commission, which oversees national education policy plans, has started drafting a reform blueprint that would introduce written and essay-type questions across subjects and shift the college entrance exam as well as high school records from relative grading to absolute evaluation.
The commission is currently collecting public opinions before finalizing the plan next March.
“In fact, when it comes to essay-type assessment, the biggest public concern is fairness and we are reviewing the use of AI as one possible alternative among options to address that,” a senior official involved in the project told The Korea Times.
At the commission’s policy briefing held at Cheong Wa Dae in Seoul on Wednesday, Chairman Cha Jeong-in highlighted the problem with the current main test structure based on five-option multiple-choice questions.
“Multiple-choice questions are ultimately just about choosing answers provided by someone else. We need to make students write their own answers,” Cha said. “If we adopt written evaluation starting with the CSAT, schools will begin to change.”
He added that expanding essay-type questions would also reshape classroom teaching and students’ study habits, arguing that such changes could encourage more reading and foster critical thinking and creativity.
President Lee Jae Myung agreed, calling the current test format unsuitable in the AI era and saying that the country should not “sacrifice children’s education for the sake of adults’ easy, convenient evaluations.”
In another notable change, the commission is considering expanding absolute grading — currently applied only to English and Korean history — to all CSAT subjects, including Korean language, mathematics and inquiry sections.
Under absolute grading, all test-takers scoring above a fixed cut-off receive the same grade, in contrast to the current relative system where only the top 4 percent earn the best mark. Officials argue that such a shift could ease “extreme, endless competition” among students and reduce pressure on them.
Under a similar policy initiative using AI, the Ministry of Education announced in February it will build an AI-based system to generate English test passages, with the goal of using them in mock exams for the 2028 academic year.
Critics, however, warn that AI-assisted “objectivity” in grading will depend entirely on how the systems are designed. The Korean Teachers and Education Workers Union argued that introducing essay-type assessments at the college entrance level would amount to rewriting an exam system fundamentally, calling for sufficient time for all stakeholders to share their views before finalizing the national education reform plan.