In the very early morning of April 17, a senior KAIST student committed suicide.

Outside of KAIST, it was recognized simply as another suicide, because just last year, four students and one professor killed themselves. But it was a shock to the community of KAIST because it happened after the introduction of the so-called suicide mitigation plan.

KAIST is well-known as a fully government-supported, privileged university. Not only was tuition free but living expenses were also supported during study if students performed well. If an examination grade was below the required level, students were required to pay for enrollment and tuition. This was considered the most serious suicide-related problem.

The suicide mitigation plan involves reducing this level-based regulation to prevent serious depression from study stress. The plan was implemented in the fall semester of last year. However, I wondered how to explain another suicide after the plan. I concluded that KAIST itself pushes students to suicide.

KAIST is an engineering-oriented university and its character is summed up with the slogan, “the school to deliver a Nobel Prize winner.” More than 40 percent of students go on to study for master’s and doctorate degrees.

KAIST shows only a few narrow career paths and lines students up along them. The Nobel Prize winner concept effectively brands those at the back of the line as losers.

All KAIST students devote themselves to studying in middle and high school in order to get into KAIST. They usually have had no experience of failure or being seen as a loser. The conflict between the elitism of KAIST’s education and the sudden experience of failure for the lowest-performing students leads to suicide.

The solution is therefore to mitigate or eliminate the conflict. This requires a policy change at KAIST. First of all, KAIST should have a broader definition of success than its Nobel Prize motto. Second, students should accept limitless competition in today’s world. Students have to get used to being failed, since they cannot always be victors in all competitions.

Finally, even though I could not recognize its importance before finishing my mandatory military service, students need to be trained in how to manage their lives.

KAIST should help students find happiness, satisfaction and success in their own way. Then suicide, which the ultimate failure of life management, could be surely removed from the dictionary of KAIST.

By Chi Chang-woon

Chi Chang-woon is majoring in mathematic sciences at KAIST. ― Ed.