I believe that this irrational social structure is one of the major factors behind South Korea’s persistently high suicide rate, which has long remained among the highest in the OECD

In South Korea, one’s undergraduate institution is often treated as a kind of social pedigree.
The name of a university is not regarded merely as information about where someone studied. Rather, it tends to function as a broad indicator from which people infer a person’s academic performance at the time of university entrance, family background, social network, and individual ability. An OECD report has also noted that, in South Korea, people are ranked for long periods according to the prestige of the university they attended, and that educational achievement is closely connected not only to employment opportunities but also to social status and marriage prospects.
What is particularly revealing is that many Koreans mock those who attend a more prestigious university for graduate school than they did for their undergraduate studies, describing it as “academic credential laundering.” In other words, they tend to fix a person’s social status according to the first university that person entered, as though one’s undergraduate institution permanently determined one’s worth.
I believe that this irrational social structure is one of the major factors behind South Korea’s persistently high suicide rate, which has long remained among the highest in the OECD.

Submitted August 6, 2026 at 10:40AM by FactStrong3204 https://ift.tt/2fEVoBc