Overseas Studying Causing Losses in Education Account

Korea`s education account is suffering from a snowballing deficit.

The Korea International Trade Association (KITA) released yesterday a report on ways to improve the service account deficit in the education sector. According to the report, Korea posted a 1.41 billion dollar deficit last year in its education account. In other words, Korea spent 1.43 billion dollars on overseas studying, for long or short periods of time, while it earned 20 million dollars from foreign students studying in Korea.

Volume of the deficit is growing year by year.

The 1.43 billion dollar estimated expenditure on overseas studying, only includes school fees. When living expenses are added, therefore, the number is said to reach 4.58 billion dollars a year.

As of late 1999, the number of primary and secondary school students from foreign nations was 1,839. Since then, the number has grown 139% annually to 4,397 in 2000, and 80% to 7,944 in 2001. The proportion of those young students to the total number who are studying abroad has also increased to 1.7% in 1999, 3.7% in 2000, and 6.0% in 2001. Last year marked a 10.2% increase per annum.

The U.S., where Korean students most prefer, was home to 49,046 students. Following India, and China, Korea took third place in terms of the student number in the U.S. The second most popular nation is China where 36,093 Korean students were studying as of late 2002. Korean students are estimated to make the biggest foreign student group in China, followed by Japan and the U.S.

Mi-Kyung Jung mickey@donga.com