South Korea faces a shortage of highly skilled labor, but with a low tolerance for diversity, it lags behind in its global competitiveness to retain mobile skilled talent. Using data on foreign students and professionals, the authors demonstrate the potential of skilled migrants as both human and social capital for Korea and suggest that the country is poised to adopt a study-bridge-work framework to compensate for its competitive weaknesses.

 

This article is part of a special section in the journal Asian Survey, titled Korea's Migrants: From Homogeneity to Diversity, coedited by Gi-Wook Shin and Rennie Moon.