A South Korean University has withdrawn invitations for three Nigerian students to attend an international conference amid concerns about the spread of the Ebola virus, Reuters reported.

The Duksung Women's University in Seoul said it "politely withdrew" its invitations for the conference it is co-hosting with the United Nations after a student at the school urged that the entire conference be called off to avoid the spread of the Ebola virus disease.

Fear about the spread of the disease had prompted a student at Duksung Women's University to post a plea on the country's presidential workplace website calling for the cancellation of the entire event.

However, the Korean university said it is going ahead with the conference, which starts on Monday. Twenty-eight students from the African continent will attend.

According to the Guinean Health Ministry, the disease is mainly spread from infected people, from objects belonging to ill or dead people. It is also transmitted by direct contact with blood, feces or sweat, or by sexual contact or unprotected handling of contaminated corpses.

Since its outbreak in February, more than 700 people in West Africa have died from Ebola, whose symptoms include diarrhea, vomiting and fever. The highly contagious virus has a death rate of up to 90 percent of those infected, Reuters reported. The fatality rate in the current epidemic is about 60 percent.

On Monday, South Korea issued a special travel advisory asking people to refrain from visiting Liberia, sierra Leone and Guinea, "while a group of South Korean medical volunteer workers scrapped an annual trip to African countries" including the Ivory Coast and Ghana scheduled for August, Reuters reported.

One petition posted by bloggers calls for South Korean missionaries functioning in the African region where the deadly virus is running rampant to be "barred" from returning to the country, Reuters reported.