A group of South Korean students is suing the government because their college entrance exams ended 90 seconds earlier than scheduled.

According to the BBC, students are asking for 20 million won ($15,400) each – the cost of a year’s study – to retake exams.

In the lawsuit filed yesterday, Tuesday of at least 39 students, it is reported that the bell rang earlier during the first session of the exam. Some students immediately protested, but they say that the supervisors were still taking their papers. The teachers recognized the mistake before the start of the next session and gave the one and a half minutes back to the students, but they could only mark blank columns on their papers and were not allowed to change any existing answers.

According to their lawyer, Kim Woo-suk the mistake with the time also affected the students in the rest of their exams as they were then unable to concentrate.

The country’s famous college entrance test, known as the Suneung, is an eight-hour marathon with double assignments on several subjects. Suneung is one of the most difficult exams in the world since it determines not only university places and jobs, but even future relationships. In order to reach the exams, various measures are being taken to help students concentrate, such as closing the country’s airspace and delaying the opening of the stock market.

The results of this year’s exam were announced on December 8.

Their lawyer told local media that the education authorities did not apologise. Public broadcaster KBS quoted officials as saying that the invigilator in charge of that test center had misread the time.

This isn’t the first time students have filed a lawsuit over a bell that rang too early. In April, a Seoul court awarded 7 million won ($5,250) to students who claimed they were disadvantaged in the 2021 exams in Suneung because their bell rang about two minutes early.

And the price may be even higher in other countries. In 2012, a man in China was given a one-year suspended sentence for ringing the bell four minutes and 48 seconds early during national college entrance exams at a school in Hunan province.