A Nation Where All the People Learn (5)

Honestly, I had put the odds of my father passing this special examination at about fifty percent.

No matter how favorably the questions were set for my father, wasn’t he still the same man who had failed even the initial examination of the lower civil service examination in his ten previous attempts?

Of course, he had said that because it was such a difficult examination, passing or failing was decided by a single question, and that he had lost by the narrowest of margins every time.

I had thought that was nothing more than an excuse from someone who had failed.

On top of that, he had taken about ten years off from studying for the civil service examination, so I thought it would be impossible for him to overcome all those formidable competitors and pass.

Of course, since Yi Bang-won and His Majesty King Sejong had such high expectations of my father, there was still a chance that he would pass by using a ‘Super Save’ even if his ability was somewhat lacking...

If that happened, I intended to persuade Lord Heo Jo and oppose it, arguing that such a decision would violate fairness and could never be allowed.

I intended to argue that the civil service examination had to judge pass or fail solely on the content of the candidate’s answer, and that blindly passing someone simply because he had rendered great service would damage the examination’s authority and fairness, so such a thing absolutely must not happen.

I was also worried that if my father passed the civil service examination, my goal of resigning before turning sixty would become almost impossible, but rather than wanting to oppose it for that reason...

My concern was that if even one or two such wrongful examples accumulated, the examination system itself would rot...