Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Real Reality]

Serious Brain Drain Threatens Korea, Report Says
Chosun Ilbo (May 23, 2007)
http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200705/200705230016.html

Korea's Brain Drain Worsening
Donga.com (May 23, 2007)
http://english.donga.com/srv/service.php3?biid=2007052373838

[TheBrain]

Good article.

[Alyallen]

Interesting stuff...

I'm helping these high school girls who are going to the U.S. to interview professors and officials at some U.S. universities about their foreign student populace. They are investigating what things make those schools appealing to foreign students and what sort of support systems and incentives are in the school for these kids....

Korea needs to improve their universities...flat out. So that students will want to come here for a recognized degree that doesn't cost an arm and a leg. And improving the perception and acceptance of non-Koreans wouldn't hurt their case any....

[bosintang]

Korea has a highly educated population and a large youth underemployment problem. They can afford to lose some of their workforce to foreign countries.

[steroidmaximus]

[Ozabout7or8]

[fusionbarnone]

Korean universities don't get much recognition in the ratings for research. Does cronyism and corruption have something to do with this? The Japanese in comparison have quite a few universities in the top 200 in the world. Wonder why that is?

If any country seriously wants to compete successfully in the information/technology age then their house had better be in order.

I've talked to engineering graduates imported from the philippines under a govt. prog. (earn 1.1 mill per month; German/white engineers start rate begins at 10 mill per month). It's perhaps the outsourcing of cheap educated foreign workers under a hogwon model that Korea has become too used to exploiting foreign professionals for a pittance.

What isn't mentioned; Korean "brains" will send their foreign revenue back to the homeland and this alone could be worth billions in foreign revenue unrelated to income from direct trade.

The dubiousness of some Korean universities and their sheepskins will fool some western companies into hiring the Korean brains. As the primary goal of graduation is to make money asap(Graduating is easy in Korea according to my Korean uni grad friends) which is true for any student from anywhere in the world, is understood even more so in Korea.

For many less affluent countries money sent to relatives from expats living and working abroad is their biggest revenue earner and contributor to GDP.

[bobbyhanlon]

[Ozabout7or8]

In order to solve the problem of educated people leaving they have proposed reforms to education BUT not to the working environment.

That is ludicrus!

The people who go overseas to get educated and then come back are only a small loss compared to educated/qualified people who go overseas to live and work for good.

Maybe there needs to be more of an effort to fix the economy and working conditions in Korea and then people will want to stay.

However, on another note, people going overseas to work for a period is not all bad news and they may come back in time with added skills.

There are a number of different ways to look at this issue and I doubt the Korean Government will will be able to do so, meaning they will likely do some knee-jerk reaction and make things worse.

[jaganath69]