POLITICS-AND-LAW · CSAT (대학수학능력시험)
POLITICS-AND-LAW/11
Politics and Law
Politics and Law · 2020 · Variant 1
Relative difficulty
Analysis source: Korea Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation (KICE)
Analysis aligned to the official syllabus and assessment design.
4.0 / 5
50
30 min
Legal case application, election-system effects, rights limitations, and institutional checks.
Cohort performance
Session statistics from official examination reports
Total marks
50
Duration
30 min
Session difficulty
4.0 / 5
Calculator policy
No calculators in any CSAT section. All arithmetic must be done by hand. English includes a listening section with broadcast audio.
Key examiner messages
Top priorities from the principal examiner before you revise
KICE Politics and Law assesses democratic politics, constitutional principles, elections, government institutions, civil/criminal law, social rights, and international law. The 2024 CSAT inquiry format is 20 questions, 30 minutes, 50 points, with candidates selecting up to two…
KICE designs Politics and Law items from the national curriculum achievement standards and publishes all questions and answers after the exam.
EBS-linked items about 50% means concepts, source themes, or problem types are linked, but wording and contexts are commonly transformed.
The official timing is 30 min for 20 questions; pacing practice should match the actual OMR marking burden.
KICE publishes annual test-design directions (출제 방향) emphasising syllabus-faithful items, EBS textbook linkage (~50% of Korean, Mathematics, and English items), and post-2024 exclusion of extreme “killer” items outside public-education scope.
Question difficulty map
How candidates performed on each question in this series
No data available in official reports
Assessment objectives
Skill and AO weighting from official examiner commentary
Skill weighting
Cognitive skills emphasised in official test design.
Conceptual understanding
Weight: 30100%Source and data interpretation
Weight: 30100%Application Tourism unfamiliar contexts
Weight: 2583%Chronology and comparison
Weight: 1550%
Method marks watchlist
Where working, steps, or method marks were commonly lost
No data available in official reports
Recurring mistakes across years
Themes examiners flag in multiple recent sessions for this subject
Legal cases: Answering from memory before checking the condition in the stem. — Underline the limiting condition and restate it in your o…
Election systems: Treating a familiar source, graph, or scenario as identical to a past EBS example. — Compare variables and wording; tra…
Constitutional rights: Losing marks on easy items because time was spent on one high-difficulty question. — Use a two-pass strategy and m…
Government institutions: Eliminating options based on a keyword match rather than the full causal relationship. — Check subject, time per…
Question choice intelligence
Mean scores and popularity for optional questions (HKDSE electives)
No data available in official reports
Level exemplars
What candidate scripts at each grade level looked like
No data available in official reports
Grade & admission context
How marks relate to grade thresholds and entry standards
Official body
Korea Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation (KICE)
Grading system
KICE standard score (mean 50, SD 10; range 0–100) with percentile and Grade 1–9 bands
Scale band
Std score
Scale band
Percentile
Scale band
1
Scale band
2
Deep insights
What top candidates did
Techniques and approaches examiners rewarded in this series
1. Build a concept map first
Politics and Law rewards understanding relationships among concepts. Before timed practice, connect definitions, causes, effects, and examples for constitutional and legal principles.
2. Read sources before options
Many items begin with documents, maps, graphs, or dialogues. Identify the period, actor, region, or policy in the source before looking at answer choices.
3. Compare similar ideas
Create two-column comparisons for easily confused pairs in civil vs criminal liability and different electoral systems; KICE distractors often swap one condition or consequence.
4. Drill graph and table language
For case facts, seat-allocation tables, and legal diagrams, state what increases, decreases, stays fixed, and which variable is controlled before calculating or choosing.
5. Keep a wrong-answer notebook
Record each mistake as concept, source clue, calculation, or time-pressure error. Revisit the same domain after 48 hours with a new item.
Command word playbook
How to match each command word to the expected response style
No data available in official reports
Time traps
Sections where candidates spent disproportionate time relative to marks
No data available in official reports
Syllabus traceability
Topics linked to questions and mark weighting in this session
Democracy, constitutionalism, rights, duties, and political participation
Official topic weighting
Elections, parties, media, public opinion, and political process
Official topic weighting
Government institutions, separation of powers, and local autonomy
Official topic weighting
Civil law, criminal law, administrative law, labor and social law
Official topic weighting
International politics, international law, and global governance
Official topic weighting
MCQ trap analytics
Commonly chosen wrong options from examiner commentary
No data available in official reports
Topic heatmap across years
Mark concentration by topic and exam year for this subject
Mark intensity
Civil law, criminal law, administrative law, labor and social law
Democracy, constitutionalism, rights, duties, and political participation
Elections, parties, media, public opinion, and political process
Government institutions, separation of powers, and local autonomy
International politics, international law, and global governance
Difficulty trend
How session difficulty has shifted across recent years
Paper comparison
Marks and duration breakdown across papers in this session
Politics and Law: 20 multiple-choice social inquiry questions
Marks you can still earn
Where valid approaches outside the mark scheme may still gain credit
No data available in official reports
Practise what examiners flagged
Target weak topics from this report inside the Revui app
Democracy, constitutionalism, rights, duties, and political participation
Official topic weighting
Practise in RevuiElections, parties, media, public opinion, and political process
Official topic weighting
Practise in RevuiGovernment institutions, separation of powers, and local autonomy
Official topic weighting
Practise in RevuiCivil law, criminal law, administrative law, labor and social law
Official topic weighting
Practise in RevuiInternational politics, international law, and global governance
Official topic weighting
Practise in RevuiSelf-diagnostic checklist
Key actions before you sit this paper — copy and tick off as you revise
- 1Message
KICE Politics and Law assesses democratic politics, constitutional principles, elections, government institutions, civil/criminal law, social rights, and international law. The 2024 CSAT inquiry format is 20 questions, 30 minutes, 50 points, with candidates selecting up to two…
- 2Message
KICE designs Politics and Law items from the national curriculum achievement standards and publishes all questions and answers after the exam.
- 3Message
EBS-linked items about 50% means concepts, source themes, or problem types are linked, but wording and contexts are commonly transformed.
- 4Message
The official timing is 30 min for 20 questions; pacing practice should match the actual OMR marking burden.
- 5Message
KICE publishes annual test-design directions (출제 방향) emphasising syllabus-faithful items, EBS textbook linkage (~50% of Korean, Mathematics, and English items), and post-2024 exclusion of extreme “killer” items outside public-education scope.
- 6Pitfall
Legal cases: Answering from memory before checking the condition in the stem. — Underline the limiting condition and restate it in your o…
- 7Pitfall
Election systems: Treating a familiar source, graph, or scenario as identical to a past EBS example. — Compare variables and wording; tra…
- 8Pitfall
Constitutional rights: Losing marks on easy items because time was spent on one high-difficulty question. — Use a two-pass strategy and m…
- 9Pitfall
Government institutions: Eliminating options based on a keyword match rather than the full causal relationship. — Check subject, time per…
- 10Strength
1. Build a concept map first: Politics and Law rewards understanding relationships among concepts. Before timed practice, connect
- 11Strength
2. Read sources before options: Many items begin with documents, maps, graphs, or dialogues. Identify the period, actor, region, or
- 12Strength
3. Compare similar ideas: Create two-column comparisons for easily confused pairs in civil vs criminal liability and different
Teacher briefing pack
One-page session summary for tutors and classroom review
2020 2020
Politics and Law
KICE Politics and Law assesses democratic politics, constitutional principles, elections, government institutions, civil/criminal law, social rights, and international law. The 2024 CSAT inquiry format is 20 questions, 30 minutes, 50 points, with candidates selecting up to two in
KICE Politics and Law assesses democratic politics, constitutional principles, elections, government institutions, civil/criminal law, social rights, and international law. The 2024 CSAT inquiry format is 20 questions, 30 minutes, 50 points, with candidates selecting up to two…
KICE designs Politics and Law items from the national curriculum achievement standards and publishes all questions and answers after the exam.
EBS-linked items about 50% means concepts, source themes, or problem types are linked, but wording and contexts are commonly transformed.
Legal cases: Answering from memory before checking the condition in the stem. — Underline the limiting condition and restate it in your o…
Election systems: Treating a familiar source, graph, or scenario as identical to a past EBS example. — Compare variables and wording; tra…
- Total marks
- 50
- Duration
- 30 min
- Session difficulty
- 4.0 / 5
- Calculator policy
- No calculators in any CSAT section. All arithmetic must be done by hand. English includes a listening section with broadcast audio.
Session analysis
KICE Politics and Law assesses democratic politics, constitutional principles, elections, government institutions, civil/criminal law, social rights, and international law. The 2024 CSAT inquiry format is 20 questions, 30 minutes, 50 points, with candidates selecting up to two inquiry subjects and EBS linkage around 50%. Korea Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation (KICE) emphasises legal case application, election-system effects, rights limitations, and institutional checks.. Priority revision: Democracy, constitutionalism, rights, duties, and political participation, Elections, parties, media, public opinion, and political process, Government institutions, separation of powers, and local autonomy, Civil law, criminal law, administrative law, labor and social law. Politics and Law rewards understanding relationships among concepts. Before timed practice, connect definitions, causes, effects, and examples for constitutional and legal principles.
Updated 2026-07-03
Paper breakdown
Politics and Law: 20 multiple-choice social inquiry questions
Top chapters
Exam structure insights
Marks by syllabus topic
Revision priority from official test-design weighting.
Mark accessibility
Estimated difficulty spread based on official design.
Legal case application, election-system effects, rights limitations, and institu
Paper structure
Official paper breakdown for this subject.
Politics and Law
50·10·100%
Official syllabus scope
KICE Politics and Law assesses democratic politics, constitutional principles, elections, government institutions, civil/criminal law, social rights, and international law. The 2024 CSAT inquiry format is 20 questions, 30 minutes, 50 points, with candidates selecting up to two inquiry subjects and EBS linkage around 50%.
Difficulty verdict
Rated 4/5 for November sessions. Legal case application, election-system effects, rights limitations, and institutional checks.
What examiners measure
1. Explain constitutional principles, rights, duties, and rule of law. 2. Analyze elections, parties, voting systems, political participation, and public opinion. 3. Interpret civil, criminal, administrative, labor, and social-law cases. 4. Compare institutions of government and checks and balances. 5. Apply legal concepts to fact patterns without overgeneralizing.
Where the marks are
Highest-weight syllabus areas: Democracy, constitutionalism, rights, duties, and political participation; Elections, parties, media, public opinion, and political process; Government institutions, separation of powers, and local autonomy; Civil law, criminal law, administrative law, labor and social law; International politics, international law, and global governance.
Examiner notes & key calculations
- KICE designs Politics and Law items from the national curriculum achievement standards and publishes all questions and answers after the exam.
- EBS-linked items about 50% means concepts, source themes, or problem types are linked, but wording and contexts are commonly transformed.
- The official timing is 30 min for 20 questions; pacing practice should match the actual OMR marking burden.
- Distractors usually represent common misconceptions, not random wrong answers, so elimination must be evidence-based.
- High-discrimination items often combine two syllabus domains or require interpreting a new source, graph, table, or scenario.
- A full mock should include answer-sheet transfer and a post-test error log organized by domain and mistake type.
- Politics and Law often uses short source extracts or data displays to test whether concepts transfer to new cases.
- Because social inquiry subjects are selected competitively, small mistakes can strongly affect percentile ranking.
- Paper 1: Politics and Law · 50 marks · 30 min · 20 multiple-choice social inquiry questions.
Exam tips
Paper format
- Duration
- 30 min
- Total marks
- 50
- Weighting
- 100%
- Question types
- 20 multiple-choice social inquiry questions
- Politics and Law rewards understanding relationships among concepts. Before timed practice, connect definitions, causes, effects, and examples for constitutional and legal principles.
- Many items begin with documents, maps, graphs, or dialogues. Identify the period, actor, region, or policy in the source before looking at answer choices.
- Create two-column comparisons for easily confused pairs in civil vs criminal liability and different electoral systems; KICE distractors often swap one condition or consequence.
Common mistakes
Legal cases
Answering from memory before checking the condition in the stem.
How to avoid: Underline the limiting condition and restate it in your own words before selecting an option.
Election systems
Treating a familiar source, graph, or scenario as identical to a past EBS example.
How to avoid: Compare variables and wording; transformed linkage often changes the required inference.
Constitutional rights
Losing marks on easy items because time was spent on one high-difficulty question.
How to avoid: Use a two-pass strategy and mark unresolved items after 60-75 seconds.
Analysis is paraphrased for study purposes. Always verify against the official examiner report and mark scheme.