Study on Factors Influencing the Selection of South Korean Universities by Chinese Students
Authors:   Asia-Europe Perspective Association, Kim Hyung-Jae , Choi Wook 
Published: June 2018

On the strength of a trend of globalization and efforts by the South Korean government and universities, the number of foreign students enrolled in degree programs in South Korea underwent an explosive rise from 3,963 in 2000 to roughly 60,000 in 2010.
Meanwhile, students from China have emerged as the largest foreign consumers of South Korean higher education, accounting for fully 70% of all foreign students in the country.
For this study, a questionnaire was given to students in China to determine the factors influencing their selection of a university in South Korea and to analyze the relationship between these factors and their satisfaction with overseas study opportunities in South Korea and actual intention to select a South Korean university. The findings were as follows.
First, five areas were identified as potential factors in the selection of South Korea as a destination for foreign studies, namely national recognition, the effects of the Korean Wave, study costs, geographical proximity, and study procedures. Examination of these areas showed economic factors to have the largest influence on the choice of South Korea as an exchange study destination, followed by national recognition and exchange study procedures. Geographical proximity and the Korean Wave were found to have no significant effect.
Second, nine areas were isolated for measurement in terms of their influence on Chinese students' selection of a particular South Korean university, namely its student administration system, residence conditions, employment support systems, financial aid systems, exchange placement organizations, exchange study costs, language institute services, university recognition, and university education level. The results showed significant effects for educational level, costs, administration system, placement organizations, recognition, employment support systems, and financial aid systems. Residence conditions and language institute services were found to have no significant effect.
Third, satisfaction with South Korean universities was found to have a positive effect on students' intention to select a South Korean university. Higher levels of satisfaction with South Korean universities were found to be associated with high levels of intention to select a South Korean university.
The significance and limitations of this paper are as follows:First this paper's result doesn't show all foreign students' peculiarities who study in korea because this research only focuses on chinese students. So the focus of research should be expanded from only chinese students to all foreign students.
Second, this research's questionnaire doesn't fully have reliability and validity. The questionnaire used in this research is not the standardized questionnaire for analyzing factors influencing the selection of universities in South korea, but maed by the researcher with other former researchers' questionnaire.
Third, the people in this study were students, who didn't select korean university and may sellect korean university in the future. So they could make different choice when they actually go to korean university. So it is hard to say the result of this study is a general tendency.
The results suggest that continued success in measures to attract foreign exchange students will require ongoing attention to the reasons that influence exchange students' destination selection and the factors behind their selection of South Korea and its universities, using this as a basis for improvements to exchange student recruitment policies and strategies aimed at stepping up the internationalization and competitiveness of South Korea and its universities in order to continue attracting the rapidly increasingly numbers of Chinese students.