By Park Si-soo
A growing number of students and civic group members are joining forces to stage street rallies, lending greater momentum to the campaign to bring down university tuition.
A number of rallies are scheduled across the country, including Seoul and Busan, over the weekend. Fueling the campaign are liberal activists and celebrities who openly support the move through the Internet and other activities.
Police are worried that the rallies would develop into larger ones. June is known here as “the month of protests” during which several large-scale rallies engulf downtown Seoul and other cities to commemorate pro-democracy movements in the 1970-80s.
Hundreds of students started holding candlelit rallies at night at Gwanghwamun Plaza, central Seoul. Police estimate nearly 600 students and civic group members took part in the candlelit vigil that continued until 11:20 p.m., Thursday.
“A series of students have killed themselves due to excessively high tuition. In order not to make their death meaningless, we should be united firmly to solve the problem,” they said in a statement.
They attempted to take to a thoroughfare, but were thwarted by 1,700 armed riot police officers.
Dozens of students staged a candlelit vigil in front of Pusan National University in Busan, the largest port city 400 kilometers south of Seoul, Wednesday.
“We will never miss this opportunity to cut tuition,” they said in a statement. A students’ association in Busan and its surrounding areas said it would host another candlelit vigil on Saturday night at the university.
Many student associations and civic groups are expected to mount their call for the government to take concrete steps to effectively lower tuition rates. They said they will continue to hold candlelit rallies until their demands are met.
Their rallies came after Rep. Hwang Woo-yea, floor leader of the ruling Grand National Party (GNP) pledged to come up with measures to drastically trim university tuition late last month, an apparent political tactic to draw attention from eligible voters in their 20s in the general and presidential elections next year.
Hwang said the current college tuition “has reached the point that it is unaffordable by the middle class,” calling the plan the “top priority” of the GNP’s welfare program.
In a move to seek cooperation from universities, Hwang hosted a closed-door meeting with 17 university presidents at a Seoul hotel, Friday.
Hwang and university heads only confirmed a wide gap concerning the issue.
“Hwang called on the university presidents to reduce tuition, while the presidents said it would be possible with aggressive financial support from the government,” an aide to Hwang told reporters.
Many university students here struggle with rising tuition. In the 2009 report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Korea’s tuition ranked the second highest, after the United States.
A report by the Education Ministry released last month showed that the average annual tuition of the 163 four-year private colleges was nearly 7.69 million won ($7,000). The average tuition of the 28 national and provincial universities was 4.43 million won.
Although President Lee Myung-bak had promised during his 2007 election campaign to cut university tuition by 50 percent, no progress has been made.