Trends in Study Abroad: China, Korea and the U.S.

Over the weekend I received an interesting alert via Google with some information on the growing number of international students in China.  According to the People's Daily, in 2010 the total number of Chinese studying abroad reached 284,700, with those returning from study abroad numbering 134,800. According to data from the ministry, the number of Chinese students studying abroad and returning home increased by 55,400 and 26,500, respectively. Students studying abroad at their own expense still account for the majority, followed by personnel sponsored by the government and employees sent by their companies. Data showed from 1978 to 2010, the number of Chinese students studying abroad in all areas reached up to more than 1.9 million, 632,000 of whom returned China.  Although the People's Daily  article did not break down the numbers, quite a few of those Chinese students went to study in the United States, and a sharply increasing number in recent years have come to study at South Korean universities, where a large proportion of the faculty are U.S.-educated.
The article also noted that the number of foreign students studying in China rose to 265,090.  They came from 194 countries around the world, but students from neighboring Asian countries accounted for more than 66 percent of the total.  Of particular note is that South Korea and the U.S. were the top two countries, in that order, in terms of international students in China during 2010.  China's Ministry of Education reportedly is taking steps to optimize the study environment and improve education quality in order to absorb 500,000 international students by the year 2020.
To place the above numbers in the larger global context, data from the accompanying table from a 2004 OECD policy brief are informative.

The DMZ as Digital Divide

On July 4, 1968 I stood in a reception line at the State Department in Washington, D.C. and shook the hand of then-Secretary of State Dean Rusk. I was a summer intern with the United States Information Agency (USIA) and we had all been invited to a diplomatic reception to celebrate the holiday and watch the fireworks display over the Washington Mall. The Vietnam War was raging and, upon meeting him, I identified Rusk only with the Lyndon Johnson administration and our involvement in Vietnam.

It was only three years later when I arrived in Korea that it occurred to me that I shook hands in 1968 with one of the two men who, in a hasty meeting after World War II, decided to divide Korea at the 38th parallel. It was Rusk who, along with Colonel Charles Bonesteel, decided to provisionally establish that dividing line between the North, which the Soviet Union would occupy and the southern U.S. zone which the US would enter. The Cold War later solidified that division into the tense military confrontation at the demilitarized zone or DMZ.

From the time I shook Dean Rusk's hand in 1968, right up to the present, the DMZ has been understood by the world and portrayed by its media as a potential military flash point and a prominent vestige of the Cold War. That portrayal underlies the appeal of the DMZ tours that have proven so popular with visitors to Korea over the past several decades.

From this point in cyberspace (or "in this blog"), I will make the argument that understanding Korea's DMZ in military or Cold War terms is an anachronism. In point of fact, the major historical significance of the DMZ is now as the world's most prominent digital divide. It divides the world's most highly networked (both wired and wireless) nation from arguably the least networked country--keeping in mind that Korea is actually a single nation, although tragically divided. The photograph above captures the lack of electric power in the North versus the South, but it mirrors dramatic differences in every measure of a modern economy. South Korea has become one of the world's leading economies, primarily through progress in information and communication technologies. That fact alone has much to do with its future, both in terms of national reunification and Korea's future role in the region and the world. More on this topic in future posts.