Dear distinguished graduates, I'd like to sincerely congratulate you on your graduation and the beginning of this new chapter in your lives.

To the parents and relatives who have ardently supported our graduates as they worked to reach this amazing milestone, the faculty members who have taught and supported our graduates, and the Korean public which has always encouraged Seoul National University: today marks the day our graduates embark on their professional journeys, having finished their designated courses of study and received their honorable degrees. Please join us in celebrating both their graduation and their new beginnings.

If this year were like any other, we would gather together, meet face to face, and offer each other congratulatory messages. Regrettably, due to the spread of the coronavirus, we have been forced to hold an online graduation ceremony and are unable to gather in person. Most of you graduating this year have been unable to take in-person courses during your last year at school, so it must have been difficult for you to interact directly with your classmates. This point strikes me as particularly regretful.

Although the past year was very challenging, I trust your learning never ceased throughout it all. I do not simply mean that classes continued to be held online. I think there were important lessons not only in your coursework, but in the process of facing an unexpected crisis and, without falling into despair, responding to it step by step in cooperation with others.

In the face of this unusual crisis, doctors have reflected on how to improve patient care and based on these reflections, they have developed better treatments. Scientists have deliberated about how to engineer more effective vaccines and medicines and from these deliberations, they have gained new insights. The general public has also increased its civic engagement significantly in the process of seeking better ways to respond to this crisis. Likewise with our school, as we braved an unprecedented pandemic, faculty members and students have pondered which responses are most appropriate and from this process, we have learned a myriad of things.

I do not mean to say that every measure has been successful. We are still in the midst of the crisis caused by the coronavirus's spread, and not every preventative effort has been a success. However, this does not mean that such an agonizing process of trial and error has been meaningless; the process has been a valuable lesson in itself. Human beings are not perfect, so trial and error is inevitable. Humans, however, are also beings who learn. In order to learn well, we must not give up easily or stay satisfied for too long. Someone who learns well does not only learn from success but also from failure. Good failures can be stepping stones to a powerful leap forward. To fail well means to fail so that something can be learned from the experience. When we can learn, failure leads not to despair, but to progress by leaps and bounds.

In this critical and rapidly changing era of unavoidable trial and error, we need the strength to endure uncertainty. This pandemic has awoken us anew to the fact that it is hard to predict the world we live in and how much it is filled with uncertainties. In a way, the society into which our graduating students take their first steps has always been like a vast sea full of unknowns. I believe that your experiences at school during this critical past year will be a valuable asset as you navigate this sea of uncertainty.

I believe that instead of being gripped by uncertainty and the fears it arouses, SNU graduates are capable of transforming it into an opportunity for creativity. There is no doubt that you will overcome this crisis and usher in a new era, demonstrating the knowledge and creativity honed during your school years. I hope you will not be content sticking to already laid-out paths but will make a better world by accepting bold challenges that can shape the coming era.

Accepting new and bold challenges need not be a lonely process. In order to go beyond making personal achievements and instead make a better world, interactions between the self and society are essential. To interact with society, you need to have both the capacity to concentrate in solitude and the ability to cooperate with others. Currently, Korean society is experiencing polarization and a crisis of division. To maintain a healthy society, we need to adopt an attitude in which we acknowledge the diversity of values and respect other people's different opinions. In order to respect others, though it may seem paradoxical, you need to self-scrutinize constantly. I hope that you will be able to consider first whether you have not made an error before blaming others when things go wrong, and that, with lofty perception and a broad heart, you will not forget the great cause towards which you are striving.

I hope that with such a self-reflective attitude, you will lead the way in making our society more open-minded. The process will not be easy. However, whatever difficulties you may encounter during the process, memories of the learning nurtured in the crisis period near your graduation will greatly assist you along the way. Once again, I wholeheartedly congratulate you on your graduation.