2026  Matriculation Address

Dear New Students of the 2026 Academic Year,

You’ve come from diverse places, backgrounds, journeys. But beginning today, you will all share one name: Yonseian. Welcome, and congratulations on your matriculation.

You stand here today not only due to your personal dedication, but because of the patience and support of your families. To the parents and family members who have stood by you with steadfast love and devotion throughout this journey, I extend my deep gratitude and respect.

To become a university student is to begin learning how to think and judge—on what basis, by what standards. Our contemporary world demands instant responses, but at Yonsei, ‘depth’ matters over ‘speed’. Your education here is about building the framework for how you think.

Once you've built your intellectual framework, you must constantly test it. This is done through asking questions. Today, artificial intelligence allows us to get answers more easily than ever before. But this actually makes questioning more important, not less. The same AI will give completely different answers depending on the questions we ask. The direction of your question shapes the conclusion; the depth of your question determines the quality of the answer. At Yonsei, questions are where learning begins. Every question you ask in lecture halls, study groups, and clubs nurtures a uniquely human thinking capacity that AI cannot replace.

But asking questions isn’t an individual activity. Questions always gain meaning through our relationships with others. My questions shake up someone else's thinking, and their questions push me to reexamine my own assumptions. This is how we grow understanding. When questions flow back and forth, learning becomes a collective experience—and this is the power that creates communities of shared learning and life.

Dear Incoming Students,

Yonsei University is a community of people who may not all know each other well, but who have chosen to unite around the values of truth and freedom. You will choose different majors and follow different life paths, but you will share one fundamental question: "How do my actions and decisions matter to our community?". When Yonsei speaks of community, we mean a way of being together that honors our differences while advancing as one.

The Yonsei community is forged in shared moments. For example, team projects routinely bring conflicting opinions, tight deadlines, and competing priorities. Yet through these very tensions, you negotiate differences, collaborate meaningfully, and cultivate trust.

Aesop's fable tells of sticks that cannot break when bundled together. A father shows his sons that single sticks snap easily, but bound together, they hold firm—a lesson in the strength of solidarity. At Yonsei, when each student's talents and possibilities blossom and connect within our community, individuals flourish and the community itself grows more resilient.

Dear Yonseians,

Every single one of you is a remarkable person with extraordinary potential. You follow in the footsteps of poet Yun Dong-ju, who wrote "my path is always a new one," and author Han Kang, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature for bearing witness to human suffering and dignity. Here at Yonsei, develop your capacity to think freely and ask fearless questions. Use that capacity to understand community and lead society toward a better future.

From this moment, you are at once Yonsei's proud students and responsible architects of this community we share. May your years here be filled with meaning—as individuals who think deeply, students who question boldly, and community members who carry responsibility together.

My warmest congratulations again on your admission.

Thank you.

 

February 27, 2026

Dong-Sup Yoon

President, Yonsei University