Some university applicants and their parents took to the streets to criticize the Ministry of Education's response to the system outage during the application period for early college admissions for the 2027 academic year.

They argue that the Ministry of Education's decision to rescue applicants who failed to submit their applications on time due to system errors is unfair, and are demanding the complete cancellation of applications submitted after the original deadline.

Around 50 parents and test-takers belonging to the Solidarity of Test-Takers and Parents for Securing Fairness in Early College Admissions held a rally in front of the National Assembly today (September 19), urging the total cancellation of applications submitted after 6:00 PM on September 11, the original deadline for early admissions applications.

This marks the first rally by test-takers since the crisis broke out, and controversies surrounding the fairness of the admissions application process are expected to continue for a while.

The solidarity stated that applicants who trusted the university admissions guidelines and application instructions and successfully submitted their applications before the deadline followed the established rules.

They added that by allowing additional submissions after the deadline, a situation has arisen where applicants who actually followed the rules face relative disadvantages.

Refuting the Ministry of Education's explanation that the change in university competition rates resulting from the relief measures is a mere 0.001%, they argued that a single additional applicant per department can determine acceptance or rejection, and that even a figure like 0.001 is never trivial to a test-taker.

Previously, massive confusion broke out when an error occurred in the application system of UwayApply for about 30 minutes starting from 5:50 PM on September 11, just 10 minutes before the early admissions application deadline, preventing some students from properly completing their applications.

The Korean Council for University Education and the Ministry of Education extended the application deadline by one hour, but after confirming that there were still students who failed to apply despite this measure, they initiated relief procedures.

The total number of test-takers whose relief has been finalized is 354.

A high school senior surnamed A, who attended today's rally, said that both school teachers and university admissions guidelines repeatedly warned that servers could go down, that the responsibility lies with the individuals, and that they were given a full five days to apply.

They criticized that despite this, it makes no sense to rescue everyone who failed to submit their applications until right before the deadline.

A parent named Jung, who has a test-taker daughter, stated that her daughter, who submitted her application a day earlier, is furious, asking if anyone who follows the rules is a fool.

Raising her voice, she asked why this incident should be treated as an exception when even a single second of delay in an exam is considered cheating.

The solidarity also pointed out that during the extended deadline, 17 universities disclosed their competition rates, putting test-takers who submitted their applications on time at a relative disadvantage.

The Ministry of Education checked the competition rates of the 17 universities, identified three applicants who applied to those universities, and recommended that the universities cancel their applications.

However, the solidarity argues that it is impossible to determine whether someone applied to a university after viewing the competition rates based solely on computer logs.

They explained that if a family member or friend checks the competition rates and informs the applicant, the applicant can submit their application without checking the competition rates through their own account.

A test-taker identified as B, who attended the rally with two friends, said that posts claiming people checked competition rates and then submitted applications are popping up one after another in online communities for test-takers.

They added that they cannot trust the Ministry of Education's claim of only three people, and that it cannot be concluded based solely on computer logs because there are many ways to obtain competition rate information.

(Photo: Yonhap News)