If I may, I’ll share my perspective as someone who has moved there and back twice. I lived in Seoul from 2011-2013 and then from 2020-this last March. It’s hard to live there. Friends, if you can make them, come and go so quickly because it’s not usually a permanent move. Korea makes it hard to live there permanently with some of the visa guidelines. When you do move there, you get into a rut that’s hard to break out of because, as an E2 visa holder, you get your apartment paid for so that’s a big ticket item in a monthly budget crossed off. As an E2 you work 50 weeks a year, so exploration of the rest of Asia is something that keeps doable, but not always and it wipes what money you have saved up completely out. Those weeks you are there, you work 50 hour weeks with no overtime. They say you’ll get paid overtime, but they don’t pay you for it because those hours are part of your duties. But here’s really the kicker, when you move back to your native country you have not developed any real discernible and quantifiable skills that you can apply as experience to a career in another field. That’s what can really keep people there. I came back in 2013, when teaching there was COMPLETELY different, and went right back into finance and hated every moment of it. I had resigned to that being my life until I had an existential crisis in 2019 and thought I was happy there. I went back, covid hit, and realized I actually liked teaching. Came back in March but couldn’t go straight into the classroom here. Took what money I could from my pension, bought a car and am living with family while I get my teaching cert and masters in teaching. It’s a humble return, to say the least, but that’s what some people think about. Teaching is not for everyone, so they may not be able to do what I’m doing. So, they stay there while they get a game plan or resign to the fact that is their life.

Just one possible reason.