Korean Job Discussion Forums

[hellofaniceguy]

Many koreans sure hate America/Americans...YET...thousands sure want to study in the U.S. of A.!
Isn't that sort of being two faced?


Koreans Form One-Eighth of Foreign Students in U.S.

One in eight foreign students studying in the United States is a Korean. The U.S. edition of the Hankook Ilbo, citing statistics released by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, reported Thursday that Korean students made up 12.5 percent of all foreign students there as of Dec. 31, 2004.
Of 585,739 foreign students from 234 nations, Korean students totaled 73,272, overtaking the 2003 No. 1 India (72,457). The two were followed by China (56,786), Japan (51,646) and Taiwan (30,945). Koreans also made up the most accompanying family members with 19,274.

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[Tiger Beer]

.. and they like to wear shirts and hats around that say USA with American flags.

In other words, when foreigners say 'koreans hate americans'.. well, it should be clarified that some sometimes hate americans, but mass majority are so indifferent or interested to a degree that a Korean person wearing a USA shirt or sweater around all day has almost zero ramifications from their peers or anyone in Korea.

[Ya-ta Boy]

[sonofthedarkstranger]

"Many koreans sure hate America/Americans...YET...thousands sure want to study in the U.S. of A.!"

Surely not the same ones.

[stvwrd]

I did my master's applied project on Int'l enrollments at US Universities, with a specific focus (case study) on the University of Missouri (MU). I'm not sure about the national statistics specifically about Koreans, but before 1997 (economic collapse) South Koreans were the highest number of int'l students at MU. Since then it has been a pretty huge drop, but over the past couple years rising again steadily (currently almost half of what is was pre-1997). It is worth noting, though, that ALL int'l enrollments are falling due to post-9/11 visa policies (MU being one of few notable exceptions). While technically speaking, the number of visas eventually approved hasn't changed much, a top student from India, for example, may have to wait 9 months to have their visa approved to go to the US, or they could leave next week for a school in Alberta or Australia. So the raw numbers of students actually going is continuing to decrease, and it is having a strongly negative impact on the US economy as all that money goes elsewhere.

I don't remember the exact statistic off-hand, but its either all Int'l students or just students from India (#1 group going to the US for study), but the number of students from one of those two groups that took the GRE last year dropped by 50%. A startling statistic for all Universities. MU is not expecting to stem the tide much longer.

All of this has long term implications as to the US's competitiveness in terms of academic prestige with the rest of the world to say nothing about developments in technical, biological, and other fields that will not be happening in the US in the coming years as we no longer attract the best and brightest in the world. (stem cell research hasn't helped, that's for sure)

I guess what I'm suggesting is that the improvement in Korea's economic situation as well as declining enrollments from every other country in the world may have more to do with an increasing percentage (not real numbers) of int'l students at US universities being from Korea, rather than any particular attitude shifts on the part of students looking to go abroad. In fact, going on the quoted portion of the article, there needn't even be a net increase in the number of Koreans for the percentage to rise, so long as the numbers from every other country decreased (quite possibly an accurate assesment of what's going on in these numbers) with the number of Korean students not falling as much as those from other countries.

An attitude shift could be possible, and should not be discounted, but it would be exceedingly difficult to prove, statistically speaking. Or, at least, difficult enough that I don't want to do it.

Besides, the opportunity to study at Harvard or Yale, for example, would surely eclipse any general negative feelings you might have about the US' policy on whatever particular issue. Two faced? Debateable, but can you blame them?

Haven't a lot of of us sold out some of our youthful idealism in order to be able to realisitcally live in the world? Do you have to love EVERYTHING about the US and a particular adminsitration's policies to study/live there? I sure as hell don't (in Undergrad I considered myself an Anarchist), and I'm planning a life-long career in the civil service (my Master's degree is in Public Administration).

FYI: my project was approved this past June, so even though I didn't bother with citiations or anything, the info is very recent. There has been one minor development in US student visa policy that is a step in the right direction since I wrote my project, hopefully it will lead to more changes, making it easier for students to go to the US. Granted, some of the 9/11 hijackers were here on expired student visas, but how many of them were from China, Korea, India, etc? US immigration policy doesn't respond to reality in a particularly reasonable way (and why should it, when policymakers are driven by politics and ideology rather than the realities at hand?), but if you look at the history of immigration policy (which I have), you see that it never has.

**Sorry to write a book here.... believe it or not it was really hard for me to keep this as short as it is.... I kept going off on editorial tangents and having to delete

[jajdude]

What bothers me is that someone says to an average person from the states: "Bush stinks. Your gov't stinks." etc... which sounds OK maybe, but they really want to take their hostility out on the poor American (because they cannot target the real offender), who may totally agree. And many people are real dumb, too dumb to separate the average citizen from the gov't of his country. So they blindly dislike you because you are from that place with the awful leaders. What could be dumber?

[stvwrd]

I totally agree. I took a class here last semester with very political undertones and was routinely asked to explain the US' position on issues.

So I would. I would explain, quite objectively, the philosophy behind a certain policy, which would often be very different from my own opinion. The first time I did this, I failed to repeatedly state that this is different from my opinion and the whole class (or at least several outspoken members of it), and the teacher, turned against me, chastising me, without giving me a chance to respond. The most annoying thing was the teacher asking me a question and, as I open my mouth to respond, she answers it for me and doesn't let me respond for another five minutes.

After that, it wasn't bad, and I even started to have fun with it.

[jajdude]

[Emu Bitter]

The problem with this is that to some Koreans all Westerners are American. For example, in that ridiculous hysterical reaction to the traffic accident in 2002 a Kiwi was attacked in Osan.
I'd be surprised if that was the only example.

[Gamecock]

Koreans all hate Japan more, but that hasn't stopped them from buying Japanese comic books en masse, movies, etc.