Today is the national test for high school students. My coworkers came in at 10 am this morning rather than 9, as did many workers in the city. The resulting decrease in traffic is hoped to help students get to the test on time.
Yes, it's much more serious (and difficult!) than the SAT.
The test takes all day, from morning to evening, and covers all subjects; students begin preparing for the test once they hit high school. The outcome of the test determines in large part where you will go to university, so it is a BIG deal.
Accordingly, there's a burgeoning test culture in Korean society. No, no one dresses up as the written exam or anything like that - it's about gifts to the hard-working students. The popular gifts these days are all based on word play, which is just so cool.
Traditionally, many Korean parents will give their test-taker ¿³ (yut), a sticky candy, or Âý½Ò¶± (chap ssal ddok), a sticky rice cake. The reason is because the verb "to stick to" (ºÑ´Ù) also means "to pass a test."
Recently, it's become very trendy to give gifts based on this kind of word play. So a few years ago, Myungsoo's father gave her sister a ball before her exam, because the verb "to roll" also means "to think well." For weeks now, you could see displays of forks in department stores -- big ones, little ones, fancy ones, etc -- because the verb "to pierce something with fork" (Âï´Ù), also means "to guess" on a multiple choice test. And tissue paper is given because the verb "to blow one's nose" (Ç®´Ù) can also mean "to solve" a test problem.
Clever, huh? I like it too.

Speaking of tests, I myself have a midterm on Friday. We're reviewing these days in class. Yeesh. I'm a bit nervous because I feel like I have something to prove. See, I was originally placed in Level 1, based on an admittedly poor phone interview conducted when I was still in DC. At 11 at night. When I was expecting someone else to call.
Well, level 1 was way too easy - I'd covered all that stuff in the first Korean class I took in DC last year. Plus, with 10 Japanese students and one Cambodian student and one me, we spent a lot of time working on pronunciation problems specific to the Japanese tongue. So I requested a move into level 2, and on the basis of the following speech test/interview, was denied on the grounds that my vocabulary wasn't big enough.
(In some respects, this was and continues to be a real concern. Chinese and Japanese students have an advantage over westerners and other speakers of non-Sino-based languages for the simple reason that Korean is highly derivative of Chinese. Korean students graduate high school knowing about 1,800 Chinese characters.)
So I was a bit down for a while, but after a few more days of extremely basic lessons, I was driven to ask the head teacher if I might move into the more advanced class of Level 1. DE-nied! For the reason that it was too full.
A couple more days of swiftly growing sullenness and I complained again to the head teacher. To my surprise, the next day I was granted another speech test (for which I hadn't prepared, naturally). This time, the teacher told me that I was at about Level 1.8, but that I could move up. Yay! I said, but then immediately started to worry that I was already two weeks behind in level 2.
Her response? "Yes, but you're Korean, so you'll be fine."
I still haven't figured out if this means: 1. having grown up around Korean speakers and Korean natives, I would catch onto the formal grammer and vocab quickly; 2. that since I'm Korean, I have something to prove, so I'd certainly study hard and catch up; or 3. that since I'm Korean, I'm by definition hardworking and therefore would not slip behind.
One of my Level 1 teachers told me in my last hour in that class that she'd pulled for me, saying that she thought my vocab was indeed weak, but that I seemed like the type who'd study hard and catch up. I promised I would.
Wish me luck!