Min Jin Lee on Exams and Hagwons

In your story “Testing,” Bo Koh, a young Korean man who has grown up partly in the U.S. and Australia, is studying for the Suneung, an intensive, daylong university-entrance exam that dictates not only which university a student can attend but often the entire course of that student’s professional life. What made you want to take a look at the Suneung process in fiction?Taking the Suneung is a rite of passage for a Korean high-school student who wants to obtain a four-year college education. Although there are ways to be accepted into a four-year college without taking the Suneung, it is the primary path for regular admissions. Despite sensationalized accounts of “killer questions,” planes being grounded for thirty-five minutes so that the nation can be silent during the examinees’ English