On October 10, the lecture “Time for Self-Compassion” was held in the KAIST Center for High-Performance Integrated Systems Building (N26) by Professor Kyung-Uk Lee from the Catholic University of Korea. The lecture was part of the program of the “Contemplative Science Lecture Series” hosted by the Center for Contemplative Science. Professor Lee talked about the necessity for kindness to oneself.

As a psychiatrist at the Catholic University of Korea Uijeongbu St.Mary’s Hospital, Lee witnessed an increase in the number of suicide attempts among his patients over the past two years. Between January and March of 2017, 76 patients attempted suicide before seeking medical consultation, while 155 patients attempted suicide in the same period of 2019. In the lecture, he pointed out that in Korea suicide is the number one cause of death for the age 10 to 39 cohort; even for those in the age range of 40 to 59, suicide is the second highest cause of death, topped only by cancer.

Employing many anecdotes from his years as a professor and psychiatrist, Lee agreed that “this world is a hard world to live in,” in which“the need to excel makes it impossible to avoid stress.” He related this to certain types of personality traits that correlate with a vulnerability to depression and stress such as sociotropy and autonomy. Sociotropy is a term used commonly in social psychology to describe an excessive investment in interpersonal relationships, and autonomy describes excessive concern about personal achievement. Individuals characterized with sociotropy may become very stressed when facing criticism or loss, while those characterized with autonomy may react negatively to even minor personal failures. Lee claimed that these two traits are becoming very common in Korean society, especially for students under significant burdens, as it is “a society that requires a high level of achievement.”

The lecture contained two short sessions of meditation for the listeners to reflect on the discussion. In these, Lee urged the audience to reflect on how and why they criticize themselves. “Sometimes it’s easy to mistake a universal experience [for] one that is unique to oneself,” he said, emphasizing the need for self-compassion without “creating an illusion of isolation.” Lee defined self-compassion as “a desire to distance oneself from pain.”.

This was the third lecture of the“Contemplative Science Lecture Series”; four more lectures remain to be held over the course of this semester.