The Untapped Social Capital of International Students in Japan and Korea

Authors

  • Gi-Wook Shin

Abstract

This article examines how international students can play a strategic role in “rebalancing” national
talent portfolios in countries with strong ethnonational identities facing demographic decline. In
Japan and South Korea, “brain linkage” facilitated through international students’ transnational
social capital offers a pathway to leverage foreign talent without requiring immediate, large-scale
immigration reforms.

Downloads

Published

2026-09-28

How to Cite

Shin, G.-W. (2026). The Untapped Social Capital of International Students in Japan and Korea. International Higher Education, (126). Retrieved from https://ejournals.bc.edu/index.php/ihe/article/view/21932

Issue

No. 126 (2026): Spring Issue

Section

Articles

License

Copyright (c) 2026 International Higher Education

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

    1. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
    2. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
    3. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
    4. Authors will be required to sign our standard License Ageement before publication.

A Word document containing the License Agreement is available for download here.