Chap 5
The CSAT

Time flowed silently, yet frighteningly honestly. A red X was drawn across my 100-day plan day by day. A month passed like that. The sweltering heat of August had subsided before I knew it, and September arrived, bringing with it quite cool breezes in the mornings and evenings. My rented room was no longer the room of a nineteen-year-old boy. It was a trench of an exam candidate with not a single gap, and the operations room of a solitary ivarrior.

My day began at 5 am., before dawn. With a clear mind, I memorized the math formulas I was weakest at, and headed to school as soon as the sun rose. Class time was the best time for review, and the 10-minute break was enough time to memorize 20 English words. For lunch, I would fight-hard alone in a corner of the noisy school cafeteria, emptying my tray while memorizing vocabulary; as soon as evening supplementary classes ended, I headed straight to the library. Returning to my rented room as if chased out just as it was closing, I would not leave my desk again until 2 a.m.

My body felt as if it were being worn away, but my mind was being tempered like steel. And the first test to prove my transformation was approaching.

Then one day, I absentmindedly picked up an economic newspaper from the reader at the library to clear my head for a moment. It was a habit from my fifties. As my eyes scanned through the densely packed names of companies and stock price indicators, they stopped at a very small brief article in a corner.

[Shinsegi Telecom, SK Telecom… Selected as New ‘PCS’ Operators]

PCS. To the people of 1996, it was merely an unfamiliar term. But I knew. I knew how it would transform South Korea. Not the era of brick-sized mobile phones, but the era of ‘Personal Mobile Communication.’ A future where everyone holds a phone in their hands. And the fact that SK Telecom would stand at the center of that future.

Not yet. It is not the right time yet.

I didn’t have any seed money yet. However, I quietly recorded the information in my head and in the ‘future investment notebook I had set aside at the very back of my diary. Now was the time to focus solely on studying. But on the day the CSAT ended, I had to prepare to step out into the larger battlefield called the world. This was the first piece of that preparation.

And finally, the day of reckoning dawned. The September National Joint Mock Exam. Before handing out the test papers, the homeroom teacher spoke in a solemn voice. “As you know, starting this year, the CSAT is switching to a 400-point maximum score system. And, as the Ministry of Education has publicly announced, this September mock exam will be the most similar in difficulty to the actual CSAT. They say it will be the most difficult exam in history, so brace yourselves.”

It was the prelude to the so-called ‘extremely difficult CSAT’.

On the morning of the exam, the classroom was filled with suffocating tension, like an invisible battlefield. I quietly closed my eyes and took a deep breath.

First period: Language Section. Reading the literature passages with the insight of someone in their 50s, it felt as though I could see not just simple text, but the author’s hidden intentions and emotional nuances. Second period: Mathematics & Inquiry Section I (Mathematics). The term “brutal CSAT” was not an exaggeration. From the very first page, questions of unimaginable difficulty were lined up. “This… if it weren’t for the brain of someone in their 50s, I would have given up the moment I saw it.” Shaking my head, I calmly proceeded to solve the problems I knew first. Third period: Mathematics & Inquiry Section II (Social Studies). Questions demanding complex thinking, going beyond simple rote memorization, poured down. Fourth period: Foreign Language Section: It was the only time I felt comfortable.

When all the exams were over and sighs of relief and lamentations of despair mingled and burst forth in the classroom like waves, I quietly put down my pen. A calm sense of satisfaction enveloped my entire body, knowing that I had poured out everything I had.
And a few days later, the results came out. The homeroom teacher handed out report cards and called out each student’s name one by one. The class average score was disastrous. Finally, my name was called.

Kim Min-jun.

The homeroom teacher’s voice was filled with indescribable, complex emotions. He handed me the report card and stared at me for a long time with disbelief. I took the report card with trembling hands.

[Top 2% Nationwide]

I couldn’t believe my eyes. My school rank was in the double digits, and I was third in my class. Just a month ago, I had been hovering in the middle of the class. On the “Burning CSAT,” known for being the most difficult in history, I had created a miracle. The entire class fell silent, as if frozen. All the children’s eyes were fixed on my report card and on my face. My friend Cheol-ho was staring at me with his mouth agape, looking as if he had seen a ghost.

That day, after the final assembly ended, I quietly left the classroom. No one spoke to me. Just then, someone grabbed my shoulder. When I turned around, it was the math teacher who had always been displeased with me. He opened his mouth with a complicated expression.

“Kim Min-jun… you, follow me.”