By Kim Tong-hyung
Staff Reporter
Choi Gyeong-joon, a 26-year-old college student in Seoul, is most worried about his English language skills as he counts the days before being lobbed into an increasingly cutthroat job market.
At a time when the economy is in a shambles and unemployment is hitting record highs, Choi knows that the ability to read, write and speak in English is not a luxury, but a necessity, possibly making the difference between landing a paycheck and staying home helping mom cook dinner.
But Choi can't afford to spend too much time and money to hone his English proficiency, when the budget is tight and uncertainty continues in the job market. His original plan for a one-year language course at a Canadian university has been watered down to a three-month ``working holiday'' stay in Australia.
``These are very unpredictable times for soon-to-be job seekers like me, and we are always on our toes. We need solutions that are direct, cheap and short,'' Choi said.
``Of course, I would have preferred Canada, but spending that kind of money over that length of a time no longer looks like an option for me.''
Recent figures by the Bank of Korea (BOK) prove that Choi is hardly alone in his line of thinking. The total amount of money wired out of the country on educational expenses has dipped by the sharpest amount since the Asian financial crisis a decade ago, the central bank said.
The $1.35 billion sent by Korean families and companies to support their students and employees studying overseas during the Jan. to May period was a 28.4 percent drop from the $1.88 billion a year earlier. This represents the sharpest decline for the first five months of the year since 1998, when overseas educational expenses dropped more than 35 percent from the previous year.
Supporting students or employees overseas is burdensome as the Korean won has lost value over the past year and the bad economy is hurting household incomes.
One of the country's major banks, which didn't want to be identified, said its customers wired $64 million to overseas accounts in May for educational expenses, a drop from the $68 million in April. The figure for June wasn't available, although it could dip below the $60 million mark.
``I think it's difficult to compare the situation to the Asian financial crisis,'' said an official from the bank.
``The monthly fluctuations over the past three months have been within the 10 percent range. And since students abroad are also cutting spending and looking for cheaper alternatives, not to mention other variables, it's hard to tell whether the number of foreign-based students is declining as sharply as it did 10 years ago.''
There is no denying that Koreans, who are known for their zeal for education especially for English, are becoming more rational about throwing money into overseas education programs. Just ask the agencies who had been enjoying a lucrative business of connecting students with foreign schools.
The YBM Uhak Center, which specializes in sending students to educational courses and language programs at universities in the United States, Canada, Britain, Australia and other countries, said it has about 15 percent less customers than it had last year.
A smaller Seoul-based agency, which didn't want to be named, said it has less than 50 percent of the students it had last year, and the drop in revenue is even steeper, as more students are looking for shorter and cheaper deals such as working holiday programs.
``The sliding Korean won has been a big factor, and the value of the local currency has not fully recovered. The drop in customers is more severe for language courses,'' said a YBM official.
According to the BOK, the country's spending on overseas education for the first five months of the year was just around $114 million in 1993, but rose to $380 million in 2000 and $1.27 billion in 2005. The number for 2006 and 2007 was $1.69 billion and $2.01 billion, respectively.
The money spent by Koreans on overseas travel and leisure combined for about $3.08 billion during the Jan. to May period this year, nearly a 50 percent drop from a year ago, the BOK said.