Students from abroad, along with Korean university faculty and policy makers, hold an open forum on policy development for international students at the National Assembly Members’ Office Building in Yeouido, western Seoul, on Tuesday. Provided by KISSA

The first open forum on the development of policies for international students was held at the National Assembly in western Seoul on Tuesday. In attendance were some 150 students, policy makers and academics.

Masoud Afrakhteh, 29, is an Iranian doctoral candidate in computer science at Chosun University in Gwangju who attended the forum to vent two years’ worth of frustrations.

“Health insurance is the biggest issue in my scholarship program,” said Afrakhteh. “My scholarship program indicated that they would refund part of the health insurance, but only after we pay up front. But every time I went to the doctor, I had to pay 20,000 won [$18]. I went three times the other week when I was sick.”

Afrakhteh is one of the 88,000 foreign students from 164 countries studying here as of December 2011. The Korean government aims to attract 100,000 international students by the year’s end as a part of its four-year plan implemented in 2008.

The Open Forum on Policy Development for International Students was organized to give foreign students like Afrakhteh a place to voice their concerns. It was hosted by the Korea International Students Support Association and Saenuri Party lawmaker Kim Choong-hwan and sponsored by the Global Peace Foundation Korea.

According to Representative Kim, there has been a two-fold increase in the number of foreign students studying in Korea each year between 2004 and 2008, but over the past four years, the rate has plateaued to a 1.3 percent increase per year. In 2003, there were just 9,705 foreign students studying in Korea.

The panelists at the forum shared their expertise interacting with foreign students and also suggested possible reforms for improving the quality of life of international students.

Jub Kook from China, head of the Chinese International Youth Exchange Center and a forum panelist, addressed issues Chinese students face.

“Many Chinese students are only children, so they may develop psychological problems because they are not used to living with others in a new culture,” he said, and recommended a psychiatric center for students with help in their language.

Eva Marie Wang, a Filipina graduate student of international studies at Korea University, discussed academic issues.

Though many students are lured by the promise of a good education, scholarship benefits and the appeal of the culture, their expectations are far from reality, she said.

She said the main problems are with administration and dissemination of information, especially on school Web sites. While some schools have functioning, updated English-language Web sites, many more don’t.

“Checking these sites is like cracking a code,” she said.

There was laughter from the crowd as Wang displayed a “not found” message on one school’s English-language Web page, a sight that they were only too familiar with.

“Some students are reliant on Google Translate for registration and submitting homework,” she said, and suggested that schools invest in regularly updated, functioning English-language sites without broken links.

Another issue Wang discussed was that some foreign students arrive with the promise of a full scholarship from universities, only to be told by their schools that they must work as English tutors in exchange.

“A scholarship is not the same as an assistantship,” Wang said. She provided multiples examples of students who have arrived with misinformation on the details of their scholarship, a problem that she suggested can be resolved if explicit contracts are written and signed by both parties.

Another student presenter, Samuel Okyere, a junior at Sogang University studying computer engineering, talked about discrimination and cultural difference. He said he had a difficult time adjusting to Korean culture at first and shared his difficulties as a Muslim student from Ghana.

“If you’re from a country in Africa, sometimes you won’t be given the same opportunities as someone from a Western country,” he said. He said that he had difficulty living in the dorms, where he was served food he could not eat because of his religion and wasn’t given an alternative. Okyere also said there is a lack of communication between professors and students, which is an issue in Korean class but more so for international students.

“Foreign students need to learn how to behave in Korean class and professors need to learn how to approach foreign students,” he said. “Korea is doing a great job, but to better the situation, there is a need for a more conductive atmosphere.”

Kim Jin-hyung, head of the global talent collaboration team at the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, responded to some of the students concerns. He said that the government is looking into building additional international student housing and reforming health insurance provisions.

“For skilled international students who graduate from programs in Korea, we are trying to implement policies to ease visa issuance and encourage employment opportunities,” he said. “Schools cannot survive like this, especially in rural areas. We don’t want the number of international students to decrease, so we’re asking that schools improve their standards.”

The ministry reviewed 347 universities in Korea last year and banned 17 universities from admitting foreign students and issued warnings to 19.

Claudia Silvero, a student at Woosuk University studying international trade who has been here for the past two years, said she became aware of the forum through the Paraguay Embassy.

“There are 10 or so students from Paraguay in Korea, and I attended today to represent them,” she said. “This kind of forum is really important for international students, universities and the government to always be in contact, and if we can spread this kind of information more often, it will be useful for everyone.”

KISSA President Yoo Kyung-eui said, “The response to the first forum is even better than I hoped for, and we need opportunities for foreign students to voice their concerns like this.”

KISSA plans to hold similar forums at least two times a year in the future