A Seoul appellate court has upheld a lower court ruling ordering the state to compensate test-takers for damages incurred after the bell signaling the end of the College Scholastic Ability Test for the 2024 academic year rang a minute early at an exam hall in Seoul.

The Seoul High Court recently ordered the government to pay an additional two million won, or around one-thousand-400 U.S. dollars, to each of the 42 people who took the college entrance exam at Kyungdong High School in Seoul’s Seongbuk District in 2023.

A lower court previously awarded one million to three million won to each of the 42 people, who filed suit in March 2025.

The appeals court said the plaintiffs must have experienced a great deal of turmoil considering the importance of the exam, but that based on the evidence, it would be difficult to conclude that they were rejected by the universities of their choice because of what happened.

The proctor in charge of the exam at Kyungdong High School on November 16, 2023, rang the test bell a minute early by mistake at the end of the Korean language portion, after which test-takers were given an additional minute and a half.