By Kim Rahn

Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) President Suh Nam-pyo accepted, Wednesday, incumbent professors' demand to organize an emergency committee to overhaul the way the school is run.

His decision came hours after more than half of 580 professors agreed to form a committee and said if Suh refused to accept their demand, they would call for his resignation.

''I will cancel all my scheduled activities from now on and focus on communicating with the professors and the students,'' Suh said at a press conference at the school in Daejeon.
''Education in science and technology in the 21st century must change. Reforms are difficult not only in Korea, but also in the United States. As head of KAIST, I will take responsibility for issues that I must. However, I believe it will be better to sort out the things I have pushed, rather than leaving now,'' he said.

Prof. Kyung Chong-min, head of the professors' council, said that he had listened to the president's thoughts, while acknowledging that there have also been also a lot of good achievements over the past five years.
''I believe he decided to accept our demand as he agreed that listening and applying various opinions is needed in the process,'' Prof. Kyung said.

The vote came as the competition-centered system implemented by Suh has been blamed as the main cause of the suicides of four students in recent months. The committee will be comprised of five people designated by Suh, five by the council and three students. It will discuss school affairs for three months and report its conclusion to all KAIST members as well as the board of directors.

The undergraduate students and graduate students councils also held an emergency general meeting in the evening to pool their opinions. The students called for a reform on the overly competitive education environment and also demanded the school allow students to have a greater say in policymaking.

This was the first time in KAIST's 40-year history that the undergraduate council held an emergency meeting. It is also a rare case for the graduate council to hold a meeting at the same time.

In the meantime, the school's inconsistency in systemic improvement is making the situation worse, as it annulled a set of measures late Tuesday only five hours after announcing them on its internal website.

The school said around midnight that the announced measures, posted at 7 p.m., were tentative plans, not official ones, and removed them.

The plans included abolishing the controversial punitive tuition system, providing English-only lectures for major courses only, reducing schoolwork by 20 percent, and not giving warnings to students with poor grades for their first two semesters.

But the school retracted them, saying the plans had been discussed between school officials and students, and were not official.
Officials said that Suh had not known about the plans until they were announced and raised objections to some of the measures later.

"Suh opposed providing Korean-only lectures for general culture courses, saying it was more effective for courses to be given in English. He consented to reducing schoolwork but said 20 percent was too much. He also said exemptions for freshmen were unprecedented," a school official said.

He added Suh was angry at the measures saying they would deter KAIST's development.