On 4 September 2026 the Ministry of Justice's Immigration and Foreign Policy Headquarters published an analysis of how international students study, work and settle in Korea. It covers about 530,000 students (holders of the D-2 visa) who entered Korean universities from 2019 to 2025, including exchange students, and about 150,000 who graduated in the same period.
Key figures: • New students: 117,333 international students entered in 2025, 75% more than in 2019. Total new enrolment including Korean students fell 1% over the same period. • Part-time work: the share of students with a part-time work permit is highest in Jeju (29%) and Gangwon (21%) by region, and among students from Nepal (47%) and Myanmar (40%) by nationality. • Jobs after graduation: 34.3% of graduates (not counting those who left Korea right after graduating) had moved to a work visa (E-1 to E-7), residence (F-2) or permanent residence (F-5) by March 2026. By nationality the highest rates were India, Pakistan and Indonesia; the most employed graduates came from Vietnam (6,495), China (4,597) and Uzbekistan (1,263). • By field: engineering 59.1%, medicine and health 54.6%, natural sciences 44.1%, education 29.4%, social sciences 26.7%, humanities 24.8%, arts and sports 23%. • Leaving Korea: by March 2026, 81.3% of doctoral graduates had left Korea for good (their alien registration was cancelled), as had 71.8% of bachelor's graduates, 71.3% of master's graduates and 26.4% of associate-degree graduates. Of graduates who moved to an E-7 visa, 32% (3,701 people) have gained F-2 or F-5 status. In every region except Gangwon, at least half of employed graduates worked in the region of their university.
Read the employment figures with care: the Ministry counts a graduate as employed only if they changed to a work, F-2 or F-5 status, so the 34.3% is not directly comparable with the Ministry of Education's graduate employment statistics (69.5% for Korean university graduates in 2024), which count employment differently.
Reform plans: the release said the Ministry's council on student visas was preparing reform tasks, from improving the part-time work system to data-based management of students. The Ministry published its plan on 7 October 2026: see our post "Korea announces student visa reform plan — none of it is in force yet".
What it means for you: these are statistics about past graduates, not rule changes. The current visa and part-time work rules still apply.
Source: Ministry of Justice press releases of 4 September 2026 and 7 October 2026 (the table of departures by degree is from the annex of the later release).