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Selected Speeches

President's Office /

Selected Speeches

Congratulatory Speech at the 75th Summer Graduation Ceremony

Our dear graduates of the year 2021! We warmly welcome all of you and your parents, the faculty members, the alumni, and all who are in attendance online. We sincerely congratulate you graduates wearing your honorable graduation caps, and all who receive masters’ and doctorate degrees after their graduate courses. We share our appreciation and congratulations as well with your parents and families for continuously providing support and encouragement to our students here.

No doubt, the graduation ceremony, the final event of your school life, is the best moment. We hope you enjoy your best moment to the fullest extent, though the ceremony is conducted online. It is already the fourth time that we are unable to have a graduation ceremony with everyone gathered together. A university is like a square where you can meet various types of people, including your fellow students and professors, extending the scope of your thoughts, acquiring inspirations, and learning the skills of compromise and coordination. Moreover, a university is a platform on which to form a valuable social network encompassing many people. With this regard Seoul National University was preparing for full-scale, in-person classes for the upcoming fall semester. Due to the recent severe COVID-19 situation, we regret that we must resort to this online graduation ceremony today. However, once the situation improves, we will make earnest efforts, outshining others even, to return our university to how it was before COVID-19. We are looking forward to when we are allowed to meet together in person, and we plan to invite to our graduation ceremonies the graduates of this year and last year, allowing us all to experience the ceremony together.

This year’s graduates have endured as many as three non-contact semesters and have missed out on school attendance. The university authority, faculty members and administrative staff did their best to prevent the coronavirus pandemic from interfering with your study, but we fully understand there is no way to compensate for what you have missed. We understand your disappointment, as we feel the same. In addition, we express our deep respect for your sincere and diligent efforts in your study under these challenging and unfamiliar conditions. I would like to express specific consolation to our international students who have studied and graduated from our university. Being far away from home and family has likely caused some anxiety on both ends. Our international students, like all of our graduates, deserve our congratulations for earning their diplomas and degrees after making earnest efforts in this difficult situation. In addition, we send a message of encouragement to all young ones in the world who are going through these hard times.

The pandemic will end, and we will overcome it. At the moment, you may feel that you have lost opportunities to enter into society due to the economic recession caused by COVID-19. However, a large window of opportunity will be opened in the process of our socioeconomic recovery. Therefore, we ask that you never lose hope. In view of the post-COVID-19 era, our top experts here at Seoul National University are now making predictions and preparing strategies in pursuit of social healing and a national leap forward. I urge you to participate in these efforts in your own fields based on the mature civic awareness you have gained while here.

Today, we have special graduates who will receive special diplomas. We grant honorary diplomas to five Korean residents of Japan who were enrolled in Seoul National University but were unable to graduate, as they had been de-registered or had withdrawn from school for engaging in the democratization movement in the 1970s against the military dictatorship. Seoul National University has already granted honorary diplomas to those who were killed in the Korean War or who laid down their lives during the April 19 Revolution. Including the five who receive honorary diplomas today, there are 22 alumni who have received their diplomas late in the day, so to speak, after doing their part in the democratization movement. We will continue to search for people who sacrificed for our country and for society and who were forced to discontinue their studies due to unfair punishments or their coercive conscription into the military. Seoul National University will remember their names.

Some people have stereotyped students from Seoul National University as study-bugs, selfish-smart, or even as those who conform to a given system and hold themselves superior to others. This is not the case. Seoul National University has cultivated not only essential experts in all areas of industry, in healthcare, in the arts and in our cultural spheres, but also intellectuals who refuse to ignore absurd realities or be silent about injustices, instead participating in their communities and acting to ensure justice. We are proud of producing graduates who do not take advantage of their vested interests and who are not ideologically biased, nor biased towards certain classes.

Of course, to our shame, there are some who appeared to act in contrast to society’s expectations. Please never forget that the society is watching you and Seoul National University with great expectations. We sincerely ask you to make continuous efforts to seek truth, justice, and fairness, as well as a proper balance. In particular, we hope you become leaders who can provide warmth to the society based on your sympathetic abilities for the disadvantaged.

Recently, Korea had a debate about meritocracy. Please remember that extreme meritocracy can lead to an attitude that overlooks inequality of outcomes as well as discrimination. Remember that your success would not have been possible without assistance from the people around you and the sound basis of our social system. Always be thankful to others and try to find ways to pay back what you have received. Respect others’ thoughts and situations. Wherever you may be, keep your gaze turned toward people in different positions. We, Seoul National University, will also endeavor continuously to make you proud to claim us as your alma mater throughout your lifetimes.

Our loving graduates! I congratulate you on your graduation once again. The graduation ceremony today may not be what you anticipated when you walked onto our campus for the first time, but I am sure that you have grown beyond what you dreamed as freshmen. When you go out of the school gate after successfully finishing your study after the effort you have expended, you will have complicated emotions mixed with a sense of accomplishment, certain expectations, and great concerns. Dear graduates! Believe in yourself, look around you, and take a step forward each time. I would like to shake your hand and pat you on your back, looking into your eyes, encouraging you to move on without fear because your future will be brilliant. I earnestly desire that my prayer can reach you through this electronic mode of communication.

Again, please accept my sincere congratulations on your graduation!

August 27, 2021
President of SNU, Se-Jung Oh