Foreign student arrivals in South Korea top 500,000 amid K-pop cultural surge
South Korea saw over 500,000 foreign students arrive last year, a sixfold increase since 2021, driven by the global popularity of Korean pop culture.
Figures released by the Korea Tourism Organization show that 505,410 foreign nationals entered South Korea for study or training in the latest year, surpassing the half-million threshold for the first time. This marks a more than sixfold jump from the 80,084 recorded in 2021, with annual increases each year since 2022 (152,195 in 2022, 313,980 in 2023, 435,129 in 2024). Tourism remains the dominant purpose of visits, representing over 83% of the 18.94 million total arrivals, while the education segment now makes up 2.7% of inbound traffic.
Representative Jin Sun-mee of the Democratic Party, a member of the parliamentary committee on culture and tourism, linked the surge to growing global interest in Korean language studies and formal degree programs spurred by the worldwide popularity of K-pop and Korean dramas. She urged the government to provide tailored policy measures to help foreign students and trainees integrate into local communities and sustain the momentum.
