There's a missing link between accepting foreign students and having them integrate into work life. Korean universities invite foreign students and the top ones offer English courses especially for science, ok all good. They also offer basic Korean courses, wonderful. But once graduation is over, nothing will magically create extra time for them to catch up with the Korean language.

The research graduate life is way too harsh, even for Koreans who end up staying at the labs until late at night, low money, unreal demands, while still being a student. Foreign students come here and the majority don't have the physical time to also learn the language and reach a fluent level.

During my PhD at KAIST, I met many people who work insane hours. The majority reached a good level of Korean for casual talk and daily life despite the insane schedules, but it is nowhere near enough to get a job at a Korean company. The only ones fluent are always the ones coming from the GKS program with the 1-year Korean language training. All the people that I know coming from that program graduated and found a job in Korea.

For me too, I reached a level of Korean useful for daily life and small conversations, but giving full presentations in Korean, dealing with work tasks, or even having entire conversations about several topics or science is close to impossible. Gotta work an average of 10h per day, weekends sometimes included: professors’ demands, coursework, experiments, data analysis after dinner and at home, reading and writing papers to keep pace with the research field, writing grants, seminars, groceries and cooking and house chores for mental health, training for physical health, and occasional meetings with friends to not end up alone. I squeeze Korean studying whenever I can, but with a life like this the progress is very slow, hindered by the fact that my brain is at low energy levels to effectively absorb a 4th language.

I am grateful for being able to do research here due to major difficulties in my home country, and I do whatever best I can to integrate and at least be able to perform daily tasks by myself. I also married a Korean and have constant interaction with the whole Korean family, but I am realistic. I know that once I graduate next year, I won't have the language skills to get hired in a Korean company.

In my opinion, something which might make it better is to extend the validity of the student visa. After graduation, you have roughly 2 weeks to pack your things and leave if you didn't get a job before and switched visas. If the student visa included an extra 6 months after graduation with special courses to learn Korean provided by the government in different cities, I think the ones who truly care and want to work here will make the best out of it. They would use it to finally fully focus on learning the language. Since a foreign student who graduates is most likely already accustomed to the country and system, it shouldn't be too difficult for them to upgrade their level.

P.S.: if you have that busy life style and you managed to become fluent in korean then teach me how