The International Scholarship Student to Influencer Pipeline in South Korea

• In Event: Roundtable Session 6
  In Refereed Roundtable Session: International Student Across Countries and Career Choices

Proposal

As South Korean popular culture has grown globally, the number of international students choosing to study in South Korea has increased exponentially. A subset of these students participate in the Global Korea Scholarship program. Many scholarship recipients have gained recognition for creating Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok accounts to share and promote their study abroad experiences in South Korea, with some even promoting the scholarship program itself, effectively acting as unofficial spokespersons. As young people worldwide turn to social media to get a glimpse into life in South Korea, these students-turned-influencers become the primary avenue by which audiences consume with fantasies about the country (Lee and Abidin 2022; 조지민 and 김도혜 2023). GKS students are also largely from the Global South, with the program focused on pulling in students from Nigeria, India, and Vietnam, all countries with whom the South Korean government aims to further economic exchanges. These GKS students attend South Korean universities pursuing undergraduate, master’s and doctoral degrees at both top universities and smaller universities throughout the country. These student influencers often speak directly to young people in their home countries, acting as cultural brokers who translate South Korean cultural norms and address specific concerns and interests originating from their home countries. From my fieldwork conducted over the past year, I have learned that the initiative behind many of these efforts starts with the students themselves, oftentimes because they are in need of community and supplemental income. However, the South Korean government and companies have taken notice of this niche yet substantial social media community and, in recent years, have begun to recruit its members to actively promote and market the country.
By collaborating with influencers from countries like Pakistan, Indonesia, and Bolivia based in South Korea, government organizations and companies can market directly to audiences in those countries. This results in the promotion of travel and tourism programs, sponsorships for cosmetic and health products, and fashion. The National Institute for International Education, under the Ministry of Education, regularly recruits and incentivizes students to create social media content about the scholarship program, then uses this content to further promote the program. In my fieldwork, I observed that many applicants seek out these student influencers' guidance to complete their applications, choose universities and majors, and decide program tracks. While GKS students from the Global South are considered recipients of South Korea’s educational aid, these new social media activities blur the boundaries of their position in South Korean society. These students are not only aid recipients but also everyday diplomats (Lutfi et al. 2022) and entrepreneurs who make significant contributions to the globalization of South Korean society throughout the Global South. However, these roles can also obscure subtle forms of exploitation and propaganda-like marketing that reinforced the marginalization of the Global South in service to the Global North. In my research, I propose a critical examination of how this program gets intertwined with business, diplomacy and domestic interests and what that means for the students in the program.

Author

• Patty Lan