Korea’s international student goal at odds with visa crackdown

South Korea’s ambitious international student target is increasingly at odds with concerns about illegal immigration in the country, according to experts.

Last year, Korea set a goal of recruiting 300,000 international students by 2027, largely seen as an unrealistic plan aimed at combating shrinking domestic enrolment in the nation with the lowest birth rate in the world.

In February, the government announced that there were about 182,000 foreign students in the country in 2023, up by 15,000 compared with the previous year. But as the number of international students in the country has grown, more are breaking immigration laws, including remaining in the country after their visas have expired or working in factories.

The government is keen to crack down on student visa holders who engage in prohibited activities. Over the past decade, it has regularly revoked the rights of universities to enrol international students if they admit too many who subsequently overstay, drop out or break other visa rules. Ahead of the upcoming academic year, 20 degree-issuing universities that failed to meet compliance thresholds have had restrictions imposed on them, up from 18 last year.

Meanwhile, the “300K plan” will lower the threshold for achieving certification in the International Education Quality Assurance System, an accreditation scheme that judges whether universities are permitted to recruit students from abroad, introduced in 2011 after a surge of overseas students into South Korea.

“I am concerned that pursuing a goal too aggressively may lead to the indiscriminate [recruitment] of international students, which has the potential to lower the quality of international students,” said Jun Hyun Hong, professor of public policy at Chung-Ang University.

The internationalisation target “has a serious risk of having a negative impact on the sustainable attraction of international students to Korean universities in the long run, since underqualified universities are also recruiting and admitting international students, resulting in more illegal stays”, he added.

Kyuseok Kim, a project manager at edtech company Uway Global and a PhD student in higher education at Korea University, said the policy has “placed a spotlight on the financial pressures faced by both students and universities, underscoring the need for a delicate balance between enforcing immigration laws and supporting the international student community”.

Universities must juggle pressures to enrol more international students as domestic cohorts shrink with the challenges of managing visa compliance, according to Mr Kim. At the same time, visa conditions demand that students meet “stringent financial requirements”, which sometimes lead them to “seek unauthorised employment, thereby risking their legal status and future opportunities in the country”, he added.

On the other hand, 18 universities, including the University of Seoul, Kyungpook National University and Dongguk University, have been recognised by the Korean government for “outstanding” internationalisation capabilities. This is based on indicators including language training abilities, tuition fee costs and dropout rates.

These institutions will be granted additional benefits, including streamlined visa issuance, additional government support and promotion, the ability to issue visas to students from more countries and expanded part-time employment opportunities for the international students they enrol.

While universities are keen to secure the status to attract more overseas students, Terri Kim, a professor of comparative higher education at the University of East London, said the policy, introduced in 2020, “will further stratify Korean universities, which are already in a steep hierarchy”.

helen.packer@timeshighereducation.com