#What are most people thinking about taking the civil service exam now?#

The "civil service exam fever" in South Korea has completely cooled down. Will China be far behind?

In 2026, 3.718 million people registered for the national civil service exam, setting a new record. Over three million people are competing for more than 30,000 positions, with 97 out of every 100 candidates essentially running alongside without success.

But do you believe it? Right next door in South Korea, the civil service exam fever has completely died out.

Once upon a time, the frenzy for civil service jobs in South Korea was even crazier than ours.

After the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997, many Korean companies collapsed overnight. Since then, becoming a civil servant became the "divine profession" in the hearts of young Koreans—high salary, respectable, and stable.

How crazy was it? In 2011, the competition ratio for the Level 9 National Civil Service Exam reached 93.3:1. In 2016, 257,000 people were preparing for the exam, while the total number of university graduates that year was only over 500,000.

There is a place in Seoul called Ryangjin, known as the "Exam Village." At its peak, 250 tutoring institutions were squeezed together. Candidates crammed into 5-square-meter windowless cubicles, studying 17 hours a day, failing the exam eight times over three years.

Some gave up million-yuan annual salaries to take the exam. Others failed six times over five years, still staring blankly at the selection list in their rental rooms at age 31.

Doesn't that scene look familiar?

But now, young people in South Korea aren't taking the exam anymore.

In 2021, 313,000 young people were preparing for civil service exams.

By 2025, that number dropped to just 129,000. In four years, the number was cut by more than half.

The competition ratio fell from 10.7:1 in 2023 to 6.1:1 in 2026, the lowest in five years. The competition ratio for the Level 7 National Civil Service Exam hit a 43-year low.

An incumbent civil servant posted online saying, "Even rats wouldn't do this job." The comments below were full of agreement.

It used to be the "divine profession," but now it's "even dogs wouldn't do it."

Why did it cool down? Three words: Too little money.

The Korean Personnel Innovation Institute surveyed 27,000 civil servants, asking why fewer people wanted to become civil servants.

88.3% chose the same answer: Salaries are too low.

Civil servants complain about low wages, and ordinary citizens don't want to take the exam either. There are too many malicious complaints (39.8%) and rigid organizational culture (15.9%). One incumbent civil servant said, "I want to resign every single day," and facing hostile visitors, feels like their "heart is shrinking."

Young people calculate clearly: Corporate salaries have skyrocketed, and this little money from being a civil servant isn't worth the struggle. Rather than seeking "stability" with low pay, it's better to go to corporations and earn high salaries.

Will South Korea's today be our tomorrow?

South Korea walked this path for twenty years: Financial crisis sparked exam fever → Intense competition → Crazy involution among youth → Wages couldn't keep up with inflation → Fever collapsed.

Which stage are we currently at? You decide.

Taking the civil service exam isn't wrong, but treating it as the only way out and "stability" as the highest pursuit in life—the Koreans have already told you with their own experiences that this path doesn't lead far.

It's not that the iron rice bowl isn't appealing anymore; it's that an iron rice bowl with low pay, heavy workload, and heavy responsibility will eventually be abandoned by everyone.

Do you think the civil service exam fever in China will cool down like it did in South Korea?