This study investigated Korean high school students’ critical reading ability in English as measured by the SAT, with reference to their levels of English reading ability assessed by the Korean College Scholastic Ability Test (KSAT). A stratified sample of students was presented with two sets of the critical reading section of the SAT. The results indicate that the two tests assess qualitatively different constructs of reading ability; those whose KSAT grades were comparatively high were not more likely to earn high grades on the SAT. In respect of item type, many students were able to make use of contextual clues to identify the main idea of a given text but were not competent enough to read it in depth beyond the surface level of understanding so as to infer the writer’s true intention revealed in the specific wordings. Furthermore, they showed a better understanding of the narrative structure in which a story proceeds along the timeline of experiential events from the author’s point of view than fiction in which multiple perspectives and storylines are convoluted in a more equivocal way.