Korea’s education authorities on Monday announced the results of this year’s college entrance exam, which saw the highest-ever number of perfect scores for the math and English tests.

According to Korea Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation, 3.37 percent of test-takers got a perfect score in English on the annual test, known here as the Suneung. This was considerably higher than the 2.67 percent who received perfect scores on the 2012 test, which was the previous record-holder.

Grades rose yet more in the math B section ― test-takers of math and Korean language can choose between an easier A version and more difficult B version.

About 4.3 percent of students aced the test, a drastic increase from 0.58 percent last year, and marked the highest figure since the state-commission exams were introduced in 1994. The percentage of students who got all math B questions right had never risen above 1 percent since hitting 0.34 percent in 2010.

The cutoff score for the top grade in math B was 100 percent; the exam has a relative grading system that sorts all students in each subject into nine groups.

The surge in high scores is expected to hurt students in the upper bracket, local experts said.

“Many students are jam-packed near the top in terms of scores, which means competition will be even fiercer. The disparity among cutoff scores for each university will be smaller, and will cause confusion for students,” said an official from Uway, a private education institute here.

With nearly all subjects seeing an increase in overall scores compared to last year, Korean B was the only test that saw its scores drop. A meager 0.09 percent of the students got a perfect score, the lowest figure since 0.06 percent in 2011.

Experts are saying subjects that had less grade inflation, such as Korean and science-related subjects, are likely to be the deciding factor in college admission.

By Yoon Min-sik (minsikyoon@heraldcorp.com)