[EDITORIALS]Apologies and nothing else

Isn’t the deputy prime minister for education, Yoon Deuk-hong, responsible for the College Scholastic Ability Test problem? Mr. Yoon, who was looking on with folded arms as complaints about the test swirled, made a belated apology.
Prime Minister Goh Kun has already apologized to the parents and students affected by the rescoring of the test.
The impartiality of this year’s test was challenged right after it was over when people began to ask why a former cram school teacher was a question maker and picked up when it became known that questions similar to those in a commercial test preparation guide were used on the test.
Making things worse, the 10-year-long principle of recognizing only one answer to each question was broken because a verbal question was found to have two answers.
Consequently, those who are dissatisfied with multiple correct answers have started to stage rallies and demanded the right to see the whole test. In a situation like this, we wonder whether anyone will accept the education minister’s apology.
Pushed by public sentiment that the ministry was doing nothing, he was obliged to apologize. He should have apologized earlier and come up with measures to make things right.
The Education Ministry supervise the Korean Institute of Curriculum and Evaluation which is responsible for making questions, scheduling the test and grading it. The problems arose because the question preparers were supervised poorly and the multiple-answer problem was not addressed quickly. Although the minister asked the director of the institute to resign, he seems to think that and an apology are enough.
The ministry has other problems: The introduction of a national education database is being challenged by the teachers’ union, and measures for addressing the problems of a standard high school curriculum are still waiting to be devised. The ministry is not working well, and the prime minister has to apologize for the ministry. What will the minister do now?