Korea sees talent inflow from U.S., exodus to China

The United States, India, and Japan are the top three countries contributing to the inflow of talent to South Korea, while China is the leading destination for talent outflow from Korea, with 4.7 times more Korean researchers moving to China than vice versa.

On Tuesday, the Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information (KISTI) released a “Data Insight” report analyzing the international mobility and activity patterns of researchers with affiliations in South Korea. Conducted in collaboration with the Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS) at Leiden University in the Netherlands, the study reviewed data from 2005 to 2021, covering 177,031 researchers and 1,125,674 academic publications.

The analysis revealed that the United States ranked first in terms of the number of researchers relocating to Korea. However, the U.S. also accounted for a significant outflow of Korean talent. Among Korean-affiliated researchers, 64.8 percent of those involved in U.S.-Korea movements were incoming, while 35.2 percent were outgoing. India followed with a 77.1 percent inflow ratio, and Japan with 74.9 percent, indicating that both countries contributed more researchers to Korea than they attracted from it.

In contrast, China showed the highest imbalance in talent exchange. Among researchers with links to both countries, 82.6 percent moved from Korea to China, while only 17.4 percent moved in the opposite direction. Vietnam and Pakistan also had high outflow ratios from Korea, at 88.7 percent and 74 percent, respectively.

KISTI also highlighted that nearly half of Korean-affiliated researchers had relatively short tenures at a single institution. The report found that 49.6 percent of researchers stayed between two and four years, while only 17.3 percent remained at the same institution for more than a decade.

The institute stressed the importance of fostering long-term research engagements, noting that longer tenures are associated with higher research productivity.


최지원 기자 jwchoi@donga.com