About 440,000 people in South Korea are estimated to be preparing to take the state-run civil service exams, Yonhap News Agency reported Sunday.

More than half of the test applicants counted “job security” as the primary motivation for choosing a civil servant as a job, while 48 percent said they study more than 10 hours every day for the exams.

The research was conducted by Kim Hyang-duck and Lee Dae-joong, who are in doctoral courses at Konkuk University and Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, respectively. They estimated the number by defining civil servant test applicants as someone who took at least one state exam last year and conducted a survey among 413 test takers.

About 34 percent of test applicants who responded to the survey answered they decided to prepare for the exam when they were juniors or seniors at college. The average age people start preparing for the exam is 24.5.

Only 2.9 percent of test applicants said they want to be a civil servant “to serve the country,” while 21.3 percent answered “to get a stable income.” When asked about the stress level, 59.1 percent said they get extremely stressed if they think about failure.

By Park Ju-young (jupark@heraldcorp.com)