Seoul (VNA) – Vietnam has unseated China as the Republic of Korea (RoK)’s largest source of international students for the first time, according to the 2026 Basic Education Statistics Report released by the Korean Ministry of Education and the Korean Educational Development Institute (KEDI) on October 29.
As of April 1, the RoK hosted 307,464 international students at higher education establishments, the first time the tally has topped 300,000.
Vietnam supplied 96,834 students, or 31.5% of the total. China followed with 78,890, or 25.7%, then Uzbekistan, Nepal and Mongolia.
Students pursuing degree courses totalled 223,191, or 72.6%. Asian students accounted for 92.1%, with 61.3% in social sciences and humanities and 18% in engineering.
The RoK’s international student count climbed from 12,314 in 2003 to more than 100,000 in 2016, driven by the pull of Korean culture, especially K-pop and TV dramas, alongside demand for overseas study and job prospects at Korean companies.
As the school age population shrinks, many universities, particularly those outside the capital, are ramping up overseas recruitment. Foreign students, however, remain heavily concentrated in the capital region.
The Korean Ministry of Justice counted 9,946 undocumented residents on D-2 university study visas and 21,719 on D-4-1 and D-4-7 language training visas as of August 2026. Seoul is tightening its focus on admissions and management of international students while seeking to let them contribute to the education system and the economy./.
