College entrance exam and motherhood

"Help yourself more, my son," said the mother with a caring voice at the breakfast table serving sea mustard soup (Koreans eat sea mustard soup on birthdays). The son answers bluntly, "Don`t you know what I`m doing today? It`s exam day." His father scolds his wife for serving the soup on exam day. The mother gives a forlorn look. After school, the son grows perplexed after seeing a text message sent by his sister saying, "Didn`t you know today was mom`s birthday?" This is from a TV commercial for a Korean pharmaceuticals company.

The main temple of the Jogye Buddhist Order, Korea`s largest, on Wednesday was full of mothers whose children will take the national college entrance exam Thursday. They were finishing the 111-day prayer that started from July 20. Mothers prayed in front of photos of their children or papers written with their children`s names. A placard in the temple read, "A Child`s Happy Companion." Churches and cathedrals across the country were also crowded with mothers praying for their children. Around this time every year, Korean media runs many articles on motherhood.

The college entrance exam is like fighting a war for both students and parents in Korea. One mother said, "Parents suffer much more than their children, 80 percent for parents and 20 percent for children." A joke says the secrets of sending a child to a prestigious school are grandfather`s wealth, mother`s information and father`s indifference. Yet fathers also play a significant role. Kim Taek-ryong, a student of Yi Hwang, a prominent Confucian scholar of Korea`s Joseon Dynasty, recorded the process of care for people studying for the civil service exam for recruiting high-ranking government officials in that period. He sent a letter to Yi`s grandson to borrow the lucky brush that a successful applicant had used, while making answer sheets with the same format the country had designated to help applicants take tests better.

The college entrance exam will be administered at 1,191 test sites nationwide Thursday. This year will see 668,500 students taking the test. Mothers who served their children well through the process will pray that their children get good scores. Once these children enter college, they quickly forget that half of their success was garnered thanks to their mothers. Korean mothers are hoped to finally disburden their minds when the exam is over.

Editorial Writer Koh Mi-seok (mskoh119@donga.com)