True
SEOUL โ A circulating claim that Sogang University's system semiconductor engineering department recorded a competition ratio of 66.1 to 1 in admissions has been corroborated by three independent Korean outlets, with discrepancies among the reports confined to decimal-point notation and minor misspellings of the department's name, according to a review of seven primary sources.
Three independent media reported the same 66.1-to-1 figure for the Sogang University department, and none of the divergences found between the reports touched the number itself. The variations were limited to how the decimal point was written and to minor typographical differences in the department's name in Korean.
The verification process itself ran into one technical hurdle: a redistributed copy of the story carried on MSN could not be parsed for its body text because the page renders content through client-side scripting. Examiners substituted the original reports filed by E-Daily and Newsis, both of which were successfully retrieved and confirmed. A Chosun Ilbo original was not pursued, on the judgment that three matching independent reports were sufficient.
Seven primary sources were reviewed in total for the cross-check.
Semiconductor-focused undergraduate departments have become among the most contested slots in Korean university admissions as the country's chip industry competes for engineering talent, making high ratios at programs like Sogang's a recurring subject of media attention and social-media amplification โ and, in turn, of fact-checking.
Against that backdrop, the consistency of the number across three outlets, with only notational variance, gave the claim a clean bill of health. On the strength of three matching independent reports and a seven-source review, the 66.1-to-1 figure for Sogang University's system semiconductor engineering department is True.