South Korea’s brain drain – Why top talent is leaving

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South Korea is losing its best and brightest to foreign institutions and companies.

PHOTO: BLOOMBERG

SEOUL - As South Korea ramps up its efforts to attract global talent by lowering visa hurdles and expanding scholarship opportunities for international students, its own highly educated professionals are quietly slipping away.

Behind the nation’s push to become an innovation hub lies a sobering reality: South Korea is losing its best and brightest to foreign institutions and companies that offer better pay, richer research environments and more promising career paths.

At the centre of the exodus are South Korea’s top universities and artificial intelligence (AI) research departments.

Seoul National University, long considered the pinnacle of higher education in the country, has seen 56 professors leave for overseas positions in the past four years alone.

Among them are not only scientists and engineers.

According to the South Korean Education Ministry data, revealed by lawmaker Seo Ji-young, 28 professors in the humanities and social sciences, 12 in the natural sciences, 12 in engineering, three in the arts and physical education, and one in medical sciences departed for institutions in the United States, Hong Kong, Singapore, China and elsewhere – lured by salaries up to four times higher than what Seoul can offer, along with generous research budgets and housing support.

The loss of talent is accelerated by a domino effect: professors leave regional schools for Seoul – and from Seoul, they leave the country altogether.

Data from South Korea’s four major public science and technology institutes in the region – Korea Advanced Institute of Science Technology, Gwangju Institute of Science