A group of test-takers of the 2013 college entrance exam lodged a lawsuit against the government, demanding to be compensated for the damages inflicted upon them by a flawed question.

The case was the first claim for damages filed by students concerning errors in the state-commissioned annual exam, dubbed the “Suneung” in Korea.

After the 2013 exams in November, four test-takers challenged the accuracy of a world geography question. The Korea Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation, in charge of making the questions, refused to recognize the error and engaged in a yearlong legal battle with the students.

In October, a Seoul court ruled in favor of the students and the government subsequently proposed a set of measures to offset the damages. These included granting college admission to some students who failed to enter the colleges of their choice due to the flawed question.

But the plaintiffs ― 100 students who had taken the world geography test ― said Monday that they were substantially penalized by errors in college admission. They blamed the state and the KICE, saying their reluctance to admit their faults ultimately worsened the damage caused by the error.

“The flaw of the cited question could have been easily determined through statistics. The KICE had ample time to admit the errors and minimize the damage, but they did not,” the students said in their petition.

According to Kim Hyeon-cheol, their legal representative, the focus of the lawsuit is not the error itself but the defendants’ attitude after the students challenged the question.

The total compensation requested by the students comes to 2.34 billion won ($2.16 million). As of Tuesday, 450 students across the country said they intended to take part in the lawsuit.

The grades of 18,884 students nationwide were affected by the flawed question.

The incident is widely considered one of the worst Suneung-related disputes since the national exam was introduced in 1994. In the aftermath of the public uproar that followed, which was stoked by the discovery of two more flawed questions in the 2014 exams, the Education Ministry vowed to announce a reform plan by March.

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