Abstract:
Student mobility in East Asia, as elsewhere in Asia in the post-War era, has been very much centred on North America and Western Europe. Each year, tens of thousands students from Japan, South Korea, Taiwan (and from China after the 1990s) left home to study in the wealthy developed countries such as the USA, Canada, UK, Germany, and Australia. In fact, international students from East Asia (Japan, South Korea, China, and Taiwan) have been the largest group in these countries listed above. This trend, however, has changed in the last decade of the 2010s, and there has been remarkable increase in student mobility within the East Asian region. Today, international students from China, South Korea, Japan and other Asian countries comprise the great majority of international students in Japan. This is similar in China, where South Korean students form the largest international students in the last ten years. In South Korea also over 70 per cent of international students are from China, Vietnam, Mongolia and Japan. As a matter of fact, student mobility within East Asia is growing continuously. No doubt such a transnational student mobility within the East Asian region carries important implications for the future of the region. There would be more young people who can speak in their Asian neighbour’s languages and there would be more cultural exchanges within the region. This paper explores the new trends of international student mobility within East Asia. In doing so, it will investigate the causes of such a trend as well as the possible political, social and cultural implications of this growing transnationality within the region.
