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South Korea's blind students endure 13-hour college entrance exam
More than 550,000 students across South Korea will sit the Suneung-the nation's high-stakes college entrance exam-on Thursday, but for blind test-takers like 18-year-old Han Dong-hyun, the grueling process will stretch nearly 13 hours without a dinner break, finishing as late as 21:48.
The longest version of the test
While most students complete the exam by 17:40 after eight hours of back-to-back tests, blind students with severe visual impairments are granted 1.7 times the standard duration. Their extended time, combined with additional sections like foreign languages or Hanja (classical Chinese characters), turns the Suneung into a daylight-to-darkness endurance challenge.
Braille test booklets, six to nine times thicker than standard versions due to the conversion of every symbol, diagram, and sentence, add physical bulk to the mental strain. Dong-hyun, born completely blind, will navigate the exam using braille papers and screen-reading software-tools that, while helpful, cannot replicate the ease of visually revisiting text.
'No special trick-just stamina'
Dong-hyun, a student at Seoul's Hanbit School for the Blind, described the exam as "really exhausting," particularly the Korean language section, where a standard 16-page booklet balloons to roughly 100 pages in braille. "There's no special trick," he told the BBC. "I just follow my study schedule and manage my condition."
Mathematics poses another hurdle: interpreting complex graphs and tables through touch alone. Though blind students now use braille notetakers (introduced in 2016) to record calculations-akin to sighted students' pencil work-the process remains labor-intensive. "We enter steps in braille on the Hansone," Dong-hyun explained, "but it's still tiring."
"Up until lunch, it's manageable. But around 4 or 5pm, after English and before Korean History-that's when it gets really tough. There's no dinner break. We're solving problems when we'd normally eat."
Oh Jeong-won, 18, Hanbit School for the Blind
Barriers beyond the exam room
The greatest challenge, students say, isn't the exam's length but the scarcity of accessible study materials. Braille textbooks are rare, and converting digital content into audio requires text files-often unavailable. Many workbooks must be manually typed out by volunteers, delaying preparation.
State-produced EBS prep books, critical for the Suneung, reach blind students months late. "Sighted students get theirs between January and March," Jeong-won noted. "We receive braille versions in August or September-just months before the test." The National Institute of Special Education cited a three-month production timeline per book, though it claimed efforts are underway to streamline distribution.
Advocacy and resilience
The Korean Blind Union plans to file a constitutional petition demanding broader accessibility to braille textbooks. For these students, the Suneung symbolizes years of perseverance. "There's almost nothing you can do in life without perseverance," Jeong-won said. "This is training for my will."
Their teacher, Kang Seok-ju, called their endurance "remarkable," noting the physical toll of tracing braille dots for hours. "I tell them to value completion over regret," he said. "This exam isn't everything."
The Suneung's impact extends far beyond university admissions, shaping job prospects, income, and even social relationships-a pressure magnified for students who must overcome systemic barriers to compete on equal footing.
