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Founded in 1897, Soongsil University in central Seoul was the first modern university to be founded in South Korea.

A private university founded as a school by Christian missionary William M Baird, the university's motto is "Truth and Service" and its mascot is a white horse.

Originally located in Pyongyang, in what is now North Korea, the school was forcibly reduced to a four-year technical school of humanities under Japanese colonialism.

From 1938 until 1954 the university ceased work after closing itself to protest against the enforcement of Shinto shrine worship. When it reopened in 1954, it relocated to South Korea, reaching its present-day Sangdo-dong Campus in 1957 and gaining the name Soongsil University in 1986.

Today, SSU has over 16,000 students, of which nearly 14,000 are undergraduates.

Students must achieve within five-seven per cent of the top scores in the Korean SAT to be accepted within the most competitive majors, which includes business and global commerce.

Soongsil University is known for its strong IT, economics and business majors. The computer science programme is considered one of the best in the country.

There are 10 undergraduate schools and eight special graduate schools, as well as one general graduate school.

Institutes at Soongsil University include the Korean Christian Museum, various educational institutes such as the Soongsil Language Institute, research institutes such as the Institute of Future Technology, the Institute for the Gifted and Talented, the Center for Computer Aided Molecular Design Research, the Institute of Underwater Acoustic Communication and the Soongsil Institute of Christian counsels.