I recently found this on LinkedIn:
In 2024, only 8% of foreign students in Korea found jobs after graduation - while in Japan, it was 44.3%. Why the huge gap?
This is a really interesting subject, because A. it’s talked about a lot yet B. very rarely goes beyond just vaguely pointing at the Korean government C. even more rarely is discussed by people who have experienced many different sides of the equation.
Let’s talk about two reasons for this massive gap - the biggest one, and the most popular one.
#1 Language Skills
This is by far the biggest one, so if you’re short on time, just read this one.
While I’m not aware of hard statistics on this (please share if you know of any!) it’s very clear that by the time they graduate, international students in Japan have a much higher average level of Japanese than those in Korea. Why?
The type of international students that Korea has attracted
The K-Pop boom only really took over the world around 2017. This is a short run-up: Japan attracts many who have been dreaming about the country for many years, and have been starting to learn the language up to an intermediate level even before ever setting a foot in the country.
How many international students graduating now from Korean universities have been really interested in moving to Korea since middle school, 6+ years before they ended up doing so? The class who graduated last month entered uni in 2021 at the latest, starting middle school in ~2014, so currently they’re a tiny minority at best. Not so in Japan, where this kind of international student is quite common. In fact - many of them are Koreans!
Timing
As per the above, Korea’s popularity boomed much later than Japan. In a super globalized era, where many of Korea’s companies have been ready to immediately pounce on this newfound fame. How? By catering to them in languages such as Chinese and English. This is in stark contrast to Japan. While their industries also do care about the international market, the difference in timing (as well as culture) means there’s still a big difference in how much this has been the norm.
English proficiency in the country.
Korea famously boasts the highest level of English in East Asia. In this case, that’s very much a double-edged sword. While an estimated ~30% of international students are Chinese, for a large portion of the remaining 70%, the temptation to spend most of their time in English environments and use English language options when provided is big, as many of them come to Korea more comfortable in English than in Korean. It also means more Korean students who want to befriend them in English, more lectures and lessons given in English to cater to them, and so forth.
#2 (But not really) Visas
“Japan is super difficult to immigrate to”
A lot of people will at one point in their lives have heard someone say this. The reality isn’t as simple. “Difficult” here is a relative term that only makes sense when compared to other countries. Let’s talk about the main factors that made this belief come about.
Demand
As mentioned when talking about language skills, many more people have been wanting to immigrate to Japan since much longer ago than Korea. Any idea whether it’s hard to immigrate to Brunei? You probably don’t - no one has ever brought it up. People have brought up Japan as they’ve wanted to move there. Korea (or Brunei) may have been harder all along; just nobody had cared, until recently.
Timing
This is an incredibly underrated factor when analyzing anything societal, hence appearing once again. Japan’s immigration demand already started back in an era when other in-demand countries may still have had easier immigration policies, which have since changed. They were, in that sense, ahead of their time. So its infamy is still based on a potentially outdated comparison to other countries.
Cultural stereotypes
This is in truth a result of timing, but worth discussing separately. Japan has long had the stereotype of being “insular”, both based on cultural traits as well as of course their strict isolationist policy for more than 2 centuries. Whether accurate or not, this association is still very much alive, meaning people naturally expect their immigration policy to be one of the strictest.
A kernel of truth
What’s very hard in Japan is naturalization, i.e. becoming an actual Japanese citizen. For that specific case, the stereotype is true! It’s harder than Korea - though without marrying a Korean citizen, the difference actually isn’t that big.
Right, so are you saying that visas are actually easier in Japan than in Korea?
In this specific case? Absolutely yes. When it comes to “getting a job in the country after graduating there”, Japan undeniably has it easier.
This is funnily enough best illustrated by comparing the cases of students who did not study there.
I did my second undergraduate in Korea. While at uni, I met several fellow (Korean) students who, immediately after graduating, got a job in Japan and moved there. As an international student looking to get a job here after graduation, I asked them, “will you just get a visa”? They just said “yes”, as if it was obvious. Having no idea that doing it the other way around would be literally impossible.
A Japanese student who just obtained their bachelor’s at a University in Japan can’t get a visa to work in Korea. Period (unless of course they’re blessed with a drop of Korean blood, but I digress). In 10 years here, having met countless foreign residents on every visa type imaginable, from every continent in the world besides Antarctica, I have never met a single one who came here right after graduating in a different country. As it’s not an option.
But we were talking about students who did study in Korea!
Ah yes, we were. The thing to compare here is “visa barriers for international students who have found a company who would be willing to hire them as an employee”. For them too, the bars are higher than in Japan - and than in any major wealthy country I know of, except possibly the US. This includes the EU, UK, Canada, Australia, Japan. Probably Taiwan and New Zealand as well. Now, the gap here is smaller than the one we just talked about for those coming from outside of the country. Obviously! Unlike for them, it’s very much possible. In truth, the “finding a company” barrier is a lot higher than the visa barrier, and this wouldn’t change too much even if the visa barriers were aligned with e.g. Japan. But it’s still worth mentioning.
What actually matters
I mostly discussed:
- Language skills because they’re the main cause
- Visas because of how much they’re blamed by other foreigners, while in reality, their relative impact isn’t huge
Truth is, there are of course more factors we could talk about:
- Each country’s respective job markets and demographics
- The motives of Korean universities (which are mostly private unis, unlike elsewhere except US)
- Related - choice of majors by international students in Korea
- Non-language reasons Korean companies hire few foreigners
But to anyone reading this who works in this space, either for the Korean government, or perhaps doing a master’s in Korea in a sociology or economy-related field, here’s the study we need: What’s the relation between 1. Korean language skills at graduation 2. University major and 3. Success rate of finding a job after graduating here? And what’s this like in Japan? After factoring these in, we may well see that for similar groups of students, there wasn’t much of a gap between Korea and Japan all along.