I like how you put it, “hack the test”. I don’t know that I think the environment will change in the near future, though I’d like it.

I read a really old book containing a Scotswoman’s impressions of Korea in the 1920s, and one thing she went on about for pages was the way that foreign language examinations were used in the recruitment of Korean government officials — except in the time she was talking about, pre-Japanese occupation, it was tests of Chinese literature and poetry. Who knows what she got right and wrong, but it seemed like a somewhat persuasive argument she made for this being the root of the disrepair that the government was inwhen the Japanese waltzed in and took over. I keep meaning to scan that text using OCR and post it on my website. Maybe sometime in a few weeks I’ll get around to it.