Japan and South Korea face serious demographic crises. Japan has the oldest population in the world and South Korea is one of the most rapidly aging. Together they top the list in terms of proportion of elderly by 2050, with 40.1% and 35.9% respectively being 65 and over, according to a U.S. Census Bureau forecast. Both nations are seeing shrinking working-age populations, with their birthrates among the lowest in the world. This puts them at great risk as they struggle to find new engines of economic growth.

Some experts argue that Japan and South Korea should encourage immigration. The former head of Tokyo's Immigration Bureau, Hidenori Sakanaka, said that "we need an immigration revolution to bring in 10 million people in the next 50 years, otherwise the Japanese economy will collapse." Jongryn Mo, a professor at Yonsei University in Seoul has written a book, "Strong Immigration Nation," urging a similar policy for South Korea.

Japan and South Korea are already supplementing their shrinking workforce with foreign labor, mostly unskilled migrant workers from China and Southeast Asia doing jobs that locals shun.

But it is time to attract more skilled workers. In Japan, only 18.4% of foreign workers were technicians or professionals in 2015, while the figure in Korea is just 7.8% this year. Skilled foreign workers can fill many jobs from staffing hospitals to working as technicians in middle-tier companies and software engineers in large ones.

The challenge, however, is that both countries remain exclusionary, closed societies despite a substantial rise in the numbers of foreigners. Politicians fear losing votes from workers worried about foreigners taking their jobs.

According to a recent report by the French business school INSEAD, Japan and South Korea are ranked 53rd and 61st, respectively in their level of tolerance for immigrants. Most foreign skilled workers have little intention to settle down in Japan or South Korea on a permanent basis, although unskilled ones might be more willing to stay.

Maria, a Guatemalan professional, decided to leave South Korea after working for six years in the overseas marketing department of a large Korean corporation. "Some Koreans complain that foreigners leave after a few years, but we leave because we're never included in the first place. Korean companies pay a lot to bring foreigners here. And then they don't even ask these people about their opinion."

Srey, a Cambodian student studying in Japan, said, "The Japanese are very helpful and very friendly, but at the same time they look at me as a 'gaijin' no matter how good I am at Japanese or able to speak to them. I am not planning to work in Japan."

Bridging strategy

South Korea and Japan need to find a more creative strategy in utilizing foreign talent. In particular, they should pay close attention to their transnational networks rather than pushing for permanent migration. Not only should both countries focus on the knowledge and skills of foreign labor talent, but also the social networks they can possess.

This calls for a particular type of social capital: transnational bridging. A person who has social ties in more than one place can serve as a bridge between those different places. Such bridging can be performed within a city or a country or across borders, but the latter is becoming more important with globalization. By bridging distant networks, people can connect disparate cultures, build trust and facilitate cross-national cooperation that are essential in business transactions. Many Indian and Chinese entrepreneurs and engineers working in Silicon Valley are active in transnational bridging with their home country.

Transnational bridging can be a good new strategy for South Korea and Japan in attracting foreign skilled labor since they can offer valuable experiences and networks as advanced economies, if not permanent places to live. They can help foreign talent to build social ties while studying and working and encourage them to serve as a bridge between South Korea and Japan and their next destination once they leave in what could be called "brain linkage."

They can still contribute to South Korea or Japan even after they depart. Maria said she was willing to do business involving both South Korea and her home country. Srey is also eager to do business with Japan after graduating, even though he will not work in the country.

South Korea and Japan should adopt a policy of "Study-Work-Bridge" rather than the "Study-Work-Migration" pathway commonly encouraged by settler societies. This new policy framework would establish programs providing systematic networking opportunities for skilled foreigners while in Japan or South Korea. It would upgrade the quality of campus life for foreign students and work environments for foreign professionals so they leave with positive experiences.

Most importantly, it would provide institutional support to help maintain transnational networks between foreigners and South Koreans and Japanese.

In Japan, a Study-Work framework has already begun to take shape. Among foreign students seeking employment in Japan in 2013, approximately 24% found jobs. According to the country's ministry of justice, 10,696 of 11,698 foreign students are successful in applying for a change of visa status after graduating from college. This is very encouraging. Still, foreign students feel that Japanese companies are reluctant to embrace their full potential and largely expect them to assimilate, often leading them to stay in Japan only for a short time.

In South Korea, with a shorter history of foreign student intake, a Study-Work framework has yet to emerge. While 64.3% of South Korean companies say they need and want to hire foreign students, only a very small portion of foreign students work in South Korean companies after graduation, perhaps as low as 1%. South Korea's immigration laws for foreign students have eased slightly in recent years, but there is an urgent need to develop solid, institutionalized support for responding to the substantial demand by foreign students who wish to find employment after their studies.

Challenges ahead

Both countries are moving in the right direction, but until they are ready to embrace a more comprehensive migration policy down the road, they should develop the "bridging" component of a Study-Work-Bridge framework as an interim strategy. That means considering how foreign skilled labor can contribute to their economies even if they stay only temporarily.

This non-migration-bridging concept can be also appealing to foreign workers who like to move on after gaining valuable experiences and networks. By activating the social networks they have left behind, foreigners can later become powerful "transnational bridges." With economic globalization, such linkages will be all the more important.

Research shows that science and engineering majors may have more to contribute as human capital, but business and social science majors are more inclined to play a bridging role. Universities and corporations should establish diversity offices, as seen in the U.S. and elsewhere, to promote a culture of tolerance and non-discrimination.

The challenges associated with aging, depopulation and a shrinking workforce are expected to intensify in the coming years. Yet foreign talent is readily at hand for both countries. They need to look no further than the skilled foreigners who already have connections with South Korea or Japan either through schooling or employment and to continue to cultivate such connections through a Study-Work-Bridge approach.

Gi-Wook Shin is director of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University and co-author of Global Talent: Skilled Labor as Social Capital in Korea. Rennie J. Moon is an associate professor at the Underwood International College at Yonsei University in Seoul.

This article was originally carried by Nikkei Asian Review on Aug. 31 and reposted with permission.

Alliances serve an important purpose in international relations, but the attention given by each country to each other is rarely equal. This kind of asymmetry is apparent in the U.S.-South Korea alliance; however, South Korea as the weaker ally can work to garner greater attention from the United States by leveraging the news media, according to Stanford professor Gi-Wook Shin and Yonsei University professor Rennie Moon.

Their co-authored editorial can be viewed on the AIIA blog. More on the subject can be found in an extended journal article by Shin, Moon and Hilary Izatt in the Australian Journal of International Affairs, and the Stanford University Press book One Alliance, Two Lenses: U.S.-Korea Relations in a New Era.

China and the United States have lately been characterized as geostrategic rivals and on a path toward inevitable conflict. But, according to Fu Ying, chairperson of China’s Foreign Affairs Committee of the National People’s Congress and former ambassador to the Philippines, Australia and the United Kingdom, this picture is incomplete and misrepresents a reality that is much more nuanced.

Fu discussed the current state of U.S.-China relations in a keynote speech at Stanford on Tuesday. Speaking to a full house in Encina Hall, she described different perspectives and shared challenges of China and the United States, and urged a new consensus between the world’s two largest economies.

“In the past thirty years, we’ve had friendly moments, but we were never very close. We had problems, but the relationship was strong enough to avoid derailing.

“Now we are at a higher level. If we work together now, we are capable of making big differences in the world. But if we fight, we will bring disasters – not only to the two countries, but to the world,” Fu said.

Fu’s visit was co-hosted by the China Program at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center and the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, two centers in the Freeman Spogli Institute (FSI). Following her remarks, Thomas Fingar, a Shorenstein APARC Distinguished Fellow and former chairman of the National Intelligence Council, offered comments and took questions from the audience.

Fu opened her speech by saying she welcomed alternative views and “a debate.”

Misunderstandings, she said, afflict the U.S.-China relationship. Confusion shared between the two countries can largely be attributed to a “perception gap,” which, she said, is aggrandized through media reporting.

Concern on the American side over China, she said, is tied to its own doubts over its “constructive engagement” strategy. An approach held during the past eight U.S. administrations, the strategy was based on an assumption that supporting market-based reforms in China would lead to political change, she said. However, this has not occurred, and some in the U.S. are now urging the construction of another “grand strategy.”

The United States, she said, also has “rising anxiety about what kind of a global role China is going to play,” and about the future direction of the Chinese economy after its growth slid to hover around seven percent in the last two years compared to its once double digit growth in the past decade.

China interprets the United States’ apprehension as misguided, Fu said. “We see it as a reflection of the United States’ fear of losing its own primary position in the world.”

On the other hand, China, she said, is “relatively more positive” about its overall engagement with the United States. The purpose of Chinese foreign policy, Fu said, is to improve the international environment and to raise the standard of living of its people without exporting its values or seeking world power. “We believe China has achieved this purpose,” she added.

The United States and others must also remember that the past can loom large in the minds of the Chinese people, Fu said.

In attempting to understand China, “one should not lose sight of the historical dimension,” she said. China at various times in the nineteenth to early twentieth century was under occupation by foreign powers, she said, and this is a reason why sovereignty is a closely held value in the Chinese ethos.

The overall “perception gap” between China and the United States has moved from misunderstanding to fear, and that, she said, is causing negative spillover effects for both countries.

Two manifestations of this fear, she cited, are the United States’ “reluctance to acknowledge China’s efforts to help improve the existing order,” such as the development of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and ‘One Belt, One Road’ initiative, and the U.S.’ “growing interference” in South China Sea issues.

“Will it lead to a reckless urge to ‘throw down the gauntlet’?” Fu asked.

She acknowledged that collision is a concern. China is focused on addressing its challenges with the United States, including avoiding potential incidents and finding ways “to adapt to and participate in adjustment in international order,” Fu said.

Yet, she cautioned that the two countries be realistic in their aims and know that China is not seeking to emulate the United States. China and the United States, unlike Japan and South Korea, do not have a formal strategic or security alliance, and they need not have one, Fu said.

“China is not an ally, and it should not be an enemy either,” she said.

“Can we accept and respect each other, and build new consensus?” she asked. She then stated, “I want to end my speech with a question mark as a salute to Stanford University which is renowned for its capability of addressing difficult questions.”

Fingar gave a brief response to Fu’s address.

Calling it largely “fictional,” he challenged the notion that there is high “American anxiety” about China. Instead, he noted, “Americans do not think very much about China,” as reflected in the multitude of polls taken recently during the primary campaigns. Thus, “there isn’t a lot of public drive to do things differently with China.”

Among U.S. academics, however, there is “puzzlement,” Fingar suggested. Puzzlement, he explained, borne less from any kind of loss of confidence in U.S. policy of constructive engagement but rather from China’s seeming departure from a trajectory that it had set for itself over the last 40 years. At the moment China’s reforms appear “bogged down;" its leaders, slow to take the critical steps necessary for economic growth; and its engagement with the outside world, increasingly unpredictable. “The puzzlement about China,” therefore, and “concern about policy has at least as much to do with concern that China may be stumbling as it does about a rising China,” he added. Debunking the zero-sum notion of international relations, Fingar emphasized instead that the United States has “done very well as a nation” in part because of its active engagement with and because of China’s success. “We welcome the rise of China, the rise of others,” he stated.

Fingar concluded with his opinion that the debacle in the South China Sea does not pose a serious threat to the relationship. Instead, “the world needs more examples of joint U.S.-Chinese cooperation and leadership” as was the case with recent breakthroughs in climate change between the United States and China. Otherwise, he added, other countries will not commit their resources for fear of a veto or objection from either the United States or China.

Later that day, Fu met with faculty members of FSI and Hoover.

Related links:

Photo gallery from the event

In the wake of this month’s G7 Summit in Japan, U.S. President Barack Obama has an opportunity to make a presidential visit to Hiroshima. Such a visit would reinforce his vision of a nuclear-free world and solidify an important legacy of his foreign policy, Shorenstein APARC Director Gi-Wook Shin and Associate Director for Research Daniel Sneider write in an editorial for The Diplomat. The co-authors argue that the visit be framed in a way that would contribute to historical reconciliation in Northeast Asia and not undermine progress made between Japan and South Korea. 

Sneider wrote in an earlier Toyo Keizei editorial that while the White House has not yet announced a decision, the momentum for such a visit exists. And while issues of divided historical memory cannot be ignored, the occasion would not include an apology. The editorial can be viewed online in English and Japanese.

Sneider also contributed to Public Radio International's podcast series "Whose Century Is It?" and two articles on the Huffington Post Japan website. The first article, written in Japanese, examines how the history of atomic bombings are taught in the United States, and the second article, written in English, explores the question of acceptability of President Obama's visit to Hiroshima by the Japanese people.

During the visit, Obama delivered a speech that outlined the threat of nuclear weapons and the need for a world free from them. Writing for Nippon.com, Sneider said the speech and overall visit was well-received by many, but also had its critics. "The best judgment of the impact of Obama's Hiroshima visit may be what follows in Northeast Asia, where the task of postwar reconciliation remains unfinished," he wrote. The editorial can be viewed online in English and Japanese.

Shin and Sneider lead a decade-long research project that examines historical reconciliation in Asia, and are co-authors of the forthcoming book, Divergent Memories, about elite opinion and wartime memory in Asia.