As tightening US visa restrictions and geopolitics lock out Asian researchers from Western institutions, South Korea is emerging as a new academic sanctuary for top talent.

According to Yoo Ji-beom, president of Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU) in Seoul, that reflects a broader trend that has seen the West giving way to Asia after decades of dominance – particularly in the field of applied technology in China, Japan and South Korea.

“Technological competition and global talent mobility are reshaping the knowledge ecosystem. Competition to attract and retain the very best researchers has become far more intense than before,” Yoo said during an interview in Hong Kong.

“[South Korean] students who want to stay or study in the USA have a very hard time getting a visa and they have to wait longer than before,” he said, adding that Chinese students faced similar hurdles.

“Instead of going abroad, they say ‘let’s study in our land’,” he said, noting that the popularity of K-culture in Asia, America and elsewhere was also helping to bring more students to South Korea.

SKKU – the oldest university in East Asia with 628 years of history – is capitalising on that shift.

In June, the university secured 13.5 billion won (US$10.08 million) in government funding over five years to recruit “outstanding scientists from abroad in energy, biomedicine, nanotechnology and quantum materials” through South Korea’s Brain Pool Plus programme.

Under the initiative, researchers will be employed on a tenure track and receive up to 600 million won annually in personal and research allowances.

The university said it aimed to recruit six international researchers at a time, mainly from the US and leading Asian research hubs.

SKKU said it had “already welcomed several researchers through the programme this year, with additional recruitment currently under way”.

After Washington proposed a US$100,000 fee for the H-1B visa last year, South Korean ministries were tasked with finding ways to take advantage of the tougher US immigration policy and lure scientists and engineers from abroad.

“We are working to create an environment in which they can settle in and concentrate on their research,” Yoo said, adding that South Korea should try to attract more international researchers to its science and engineering graduate programmes and support their career development.

Data from South Korea’s Ministry of Education shows that the total number of international students in higher education reached more than 307,000 this year, up 21 per cent from 2025.

Around 223,000 of them are enrolled in degree programmes – a rise of almost 25 per cent from a year ago – with Chinese students making up the largest group at nearly one-third of the total, according to a report released in August.

Asian students accounted for 92 per cent of South Korea’s international student population across both degree and non-degree programmes, such as Korean language courses.

Vietnam led with almost 100,000 students at 31.5 per cent, followed by China at 25.7 per cent, and Uzbekistan at 6.8 per cent, Nepal at 6.5 per cent and Mongolia at 5.6 per cent.

Yoo, a materials scientist, has bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Seoul National University. He completed a PhD in materials engineering at Stanford University in 1989.

Following his doctoral studies, Yoo returned to South Korea and spent five years conducting research at the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute in Daejeon before joining SKKU in 1994.

He has led research on carbon-based materials, including graphene. He served as vice-director of the SKKU Advanced Institute of Nanotechnology and as dean of the College of Engineering before beginning his four-year term as university president in 2023. He is now set to serve a second term.

Yoo described the pace of change in China’s universities and research ecosystem as “remarkable” with significant advances in almost every field of research.

“I see this growth as the result of sustained, long-term investment in research, a deep pool of young researchers and the capacity to translate research quickly into industrial application,” he said. “There is much that Korean universities can learn from this experience.

“I believe Chinese and Korean universities can be partners in a shared knowledge ecosystem – competing and cooperating at the same time, and growing together,” he added.

According to Yoo, energy materials offered the most promising avenues for joint research. He listed as examples next-generation solar cells and batteries, environmental materials for carbon neutrality, nanomedicine and biomaterials, and fundamental nanoscience such as two-dimensional materials.

“These fields have a large basic-research component, and they benefit greatly when researchers bring complementary strengths together,” he said.

While US-China tech decoupling has rattled global industries such as semiconductors and rechargeable batteries, Yoo said universities should remain neutral and prioritise open collaboration built on trust, transparency and shared challenges such as climate, energy and health.

“Over the past several years, even as geopolitical tensions have risen, SKKU’s international joint research and people-to-people exchanges with the United States, China and many other countries have expanded,” he said.

“Nature Index data show that research collaboration between Korea and China grew by more than 80 per cent in 2024, while Korea-US collaboration reached its highest level in a decade that same year.

“To me, this suggests that scientific cooperation need not be a matter of choosing one partner over another.”Yoo said SKKU was focused on developing joint research partnerships and exchanges across Hong Kong, mainland China, the US, Japan, Europe and Southeast Asia.

In the Greater Bay Area, the university has agreements with institutions such as City University of Hong Kong, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou.

It also has long-standing partnerships with Peking University, Tsinghua University, Fudan University and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, including a regional governance forum run by its think tank with Chinese partners for the past 20 years.

He said universities were about academic work, not politics. “Instead of deep tech or hi-tech [we need to] focus on fundamental science and try to find new phenomena, new materials and new ways to do something,” Yoo said. “Basic studies take more than 10 years, and that is one of the ways to avoid conflicts.”