South Korea’s neoliberal education model lures global students but fails to integrate them into systemic inequities
Original framing: “South Korea beats foreign student target, but struggles to keep them” — South China Morning Post
The Korean government’s international student strategy is a classic *Anansi* trickster tale—where the spider (state) weaves a web of metrics and rankings to lure birds (students) into a gilded cage, only to feast on their labor without reciprocity. Like Coyote’s myths, which expose the absurdity of rigid systems, South Korea’s model reveals the hypocrisy of a nation that markets itself as ‘global’ while erecting barriers to belonging. The trickster here is the *hallyu* (K-wave) fantasy: students are sold the dream of cultural exchange, but wake up in a neoliberal sweatshop.
South Korea’s international student strategy is a neoliberal paradox: it leverages global talent to fuel its economy while systematically denying these students the rights and belonging that would make them long-term contributors.
The historical roots of this model lie in post-authoritarian economic nationalism, where education became a tool for global prestige without addressing structural inequities. Cross-cultural comparisons reveal that countries treating students as future citizens—like Canada or Germany—achieve higher retention and innovation, while South Korea’s extractive model risks becoming a cautionary tale. The trickster dimension exposes the absurdity of a system that markets itself as ‘open’ while erecting barriers to residency, labor rights, and cultural integration. Solutions must center permanent residency pathways, labor protections, and decolonized curricula, with Indigenous and marginalized voices leading the redesign of higher education as a site of mutual flourishing rather than exploitation.