Seoul National University opened on 15 October 1946 as the first comprehensive university of independent Korea, its timeline says. It reports 30,638 enrolled students as of April 2026. Ryu Hong Lim is its 28th President.
Agriculture is taught in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS), which has 8 departments offering 17 major and interdisciplinary programmes. CALS says its predecessor, the College of Agriculture and Forestry, merged with the university in August 1946. Its research groupings cover plants, forest, food and animals, applied biology and chemistry, rural systems, biosystems and biomaterials, and agricultural economics and rural development. The Research Institute of Agriculture and Life Sciences coordinates affiliated institutes and centres. The Vegetable Breeding Research Center, designated by the agriculture ministry in 2010, works with seed companies and individual breeders on pepper, watermelon, onion and Chinese cabbage cultivars, CALS says. The college also lists the Plant Genomics and Breeding Institute, the Graduate School of International Agricultural Technology, established in 2014, and an experimental animal farm on the PyeongChang Campus.