SOUTH KOREA: 13% of Chinese students stay illegally

Thirteen percent of the estimated 60,444 Chinese students in Korea are in the country illegally, the Justice Ministry said last week. The Dong-a Ilbo reports that as of 30 April, Chinese students accounted for 77.7% of the estimated 77,743 foreign students in Korea from 130 countries. Mongolia was a distant second with 3,152 students, Vietnam third with 2,096, Japan fourth with 1,827, and the United States fifth with 1,101.

The number of foreign students excluding those from China shot up 270% from 6,350 in 2004 to 17,299 in April this year. That of Chinese students rose 550% over the same period from 10,988 to 60,444. The rapid influx of Chinese students led to a rise in illegal aliens among them. The ministry said the number of Chinese students who overstayed their visas, including the D-2 visa for studying abroad and the D-4 for training, skyrocketed 11.7 fold from 685 to 7,999 over the same period.

The increase in the numbers of both legal and illegal Chinese students in Korea is attributed to the growing popularity of Korean universities among Chinese people. Another reason is that schools are recruiting Chinese students to make up for the decline in the number of Korean freshmen stemming from a fall in college-age students.
Full report on the Dong-a-Ilbo site