By Han Sang-hee

Suh Nam-pyo, president of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), is coming under growing pressure to step down, to take responsibility of what they call a "mad drive" to boost competition at the cost of students' lives.

Suh had apparently underestimated the severity of the matter until Thursday when another student took his own life under circumstances related to the prestigious school ― the fourth suicide in less than four months.

In his message to students several days before the fourth suicide, Suh insinuated students must learn to endure some stress stemming from competition and have a stronger will to overcome difficulties.

However, the latest suicide was the final straw. Suh held an emergency press conference Thursday evening, expressing his condolences to the families of the students and also announcing that the school is scraping the penalty tuition system, where students with less than a 3.0 GPA has to pay a certain amount of tuition.



His apology and pledge to remove the punitive tuition rule equates to admitting that his initiative to foster greater competition is linked to the series of suicides.

The student, only identified as Park, was found near the entrance of an apartment in Incheon Thursday. The police discovered that before he took his own life, he told his professor and psychiatrist that he ''didn't have the urge to study'' and that ''he couldn't go to school anymore.'' His low school grades reportedly had depressed him.

But many are questioning if the system was actually the main reason these students killed themselves: shouldn't they have known in the first place that KAIST would be one of the most competitive schools in the country? If this is so, what was it that led the four students to turn to such drastic measures within such a short period of each other?

'Competition is a given'

KAIST was established in 1984 and welcomed students who placed in the top 1 percent of the state-run College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT), which made it obviously the toughest to get accepted at, yet the most respected school in the country.

Since the university is led by some of the brightest minds in the country and the fact that it nurtured aspiring scientists over the years, the government financially supported the school through tuition and dormitory stipends.

But when Suh became president of KAIST in 2007, he changed the tuition policy and had students that did not make a certain cut in their grades pay for their own tuition, adding fuel to the already competitive environment the students were immersed in. Among the four students who committed suicide, two of them were extremely stressed due to low grades, adding weight to grades and overly intense competition as the cause.

Some have also pointed out that the overall atmosphere of the school, such as having to live in dormitories and being separated from regular social backgrounds in addition to the immense stress from their keeping up with their studies to have combined to push students to their deaths.

''Competition is a given and I'm sure most of the students knew that it would be like this when they came to KAIST. We really don't have a choice and I think that's the major problem here,'' Choi In-ho, vice president of KAIST's student council said.

''Students from KAIST are used to studying and competition, but instead of enjoying their time, they are pushed to the point where there is no time to think about anything else,'' he added.

Kwak Keum-ju, professor at Seoul National University's department of psychology agreed.

''There are a lot of university students who still don't know who they are and what they want to do with their lives. Pushing them to drastic conditions such as intense competition can lead them to become confused, depressed and even commit suicide,'' Kwak said.

What now?

At the press conference Thursday, president Suh announced that he was scraping the tuition system and that the school will cover the tuition for the next eight semesters.

''We, including myself and the entire faculty at the school, are in great shock and grief and we apologize to fellow citizens, parents and students,'' Suh said.

Unsatisfied fellow professors and students have pointed out the need for more specific and effective measures to meet the students' needs and expectations.

Prof. Cho Kuk from SNU's school of law was one of those people who expressed his views on the issue openly, saying that Suh should step down.

''The person in charge of trying to make students into studying robots by threatening them with tuition payment punishment must take responsibility and step down,'' he wrote.

Fellow professor Kim Ki-seok from SNU's department of education also said there is no university in the world that can reach the top "by pushing its students to death." Prof. Woo Hee-jong from SNU's college of veterinary medicine also pointed out that it was immature to think that the students will study hard as far as they are pressured enough by tuition through their Facebook pages.

An official from KAIST said that the school is searching for proper measures to stop the suicides, including running psychology tests for students and also offer counseling session for unstable students.

''We are also looking into inviting experts and hold seminars and sessions to come up with effective plans to prevent further incidents,'' the official said.