Most Young Overseas Students in U.S., Canada, New Zealand

It has been revealed that 4427 of Seoul’s elementary, middle and high school students have gone abroad for study last year. This is equivalent to 31.4 per 10,000 students in the Seoul area. The number of young students studying abroad has exceeded 4400 for three years since 2001.

Especially in Gangnam-gu and Seocho-gu, the two areas in Seoul with the highest number of overseas students, 2937(220 per 10,000 students in this area) have left to study abroad.

According to an analysis of a report submitted to the National Assembly on Oct.3 by the Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development, the number of Korean elementary, middle and high school students leaving to study abroad have increased 80.7 percent (3547), from 4397 in the year 2000 to 7944 in 2001. Also, in 2002 it increased by 27.5 percent (2188) to 10,132, proving the number of study abroad students is increasing.

Comparison among the 16 local autonomous bodies in Korea of the number of study abroad students per 10,000 elementary, middle and high school students show Seoul as having the highest rate with 31.8. Gyeonggi(17.4), Daejeon(13.7), Incheon(10.3), Busan(8.4) and Daegu(8.0) followed, in this order. The overall average was 14.1 and it has been shown that Seoul and Gyeonggi are leading the trend in studying abroad at an early age.

The countries that the students left for in 2001 and 2002 were the United States(15,737), Canada(6381), New Zealand(5131), China(4981), Australia(1823), Great Britain(1012), Japan(981), etc. Five out of the seven top ranking countries were English-speaking countries.

Education experts point out as the most important reasons for this study abroad boom the distrust toward public education and the high interest in the importance of English education.

Myoung-Gun Lee gun43@donga.com