This is the second article in a series on the globalization of Korean universities, investigating the widening gap between government-led recruitment targets and the administrative realities international students face in the immigration system.
Student enrollment at Korean universities is becoming more internationally diverse than ever before. Yet in contrast, the number of foreign instructors continues to decline, exposing structural limits in the country's globalization drive.
Various factors, from low pay and rigid employment rules to visa constraints and housing costs, are undermining universities' efforts to attract and retain global faculty members.
At the same time, universities face a delicate balancing act — easing barriers to bring in more foreign faculty while ensuring they are not hired merely to boost rankings, but can make meaningful contributions to research and teaching.
Pay gap widens under tuition freeze
Data from the Korean Educational Development Institute showed that the number of full-time foreign instructors surged from 1,671 in 2005 to a peak of 5,358 in 2013, before dropping below 5,000 in 2017 and declining further to 4,013 as of 2025. The trajectory tracks the budgetary strain universities began feeling after a tuition freeze.
The freeze has its roots in the early 2000s, when criticism over steep tuition hikes prompted politicians to pledge cuts. The government introduced a tuition cap in 2011, following a 2010 revision to the Higher Education Act that imposed administrative and financial penalties on universities exceeding the permitted increase rate. Since then, tuition fees have effectively remained frozen for nearly 17 years.
With domestic student numbers also falling, universities say the policy has squeezed budgets and constrained investment in research and education — with faculty salaries bearing much of the cost. As a result, low pay remains one of the biggest obstacles to attracting foreign instructors, with Korean universities falling far behind global benchmarks.
In economics, for instance, professors at the top 30 universities in the U.S. typically earn more than 200 million won ($136,000) a year, while mid-career faculty at leading institutions in the U.S. and Hong Kong can command upwards of 300 million won, rising to about 350 million won.
Korean university salaries, once around 50 percent of global benchmarks in the 2010s, have since fallen to roughly 30 percent, widening the gap and weakening efforts to attract top international scholars.
Source: Korea Times News
