Cultivating the next Elon Musk: building a lifelong pathway for immigrants

Audio report: written by reporters, read by AI

Hyuncheol Bryant Kim

The author, a medical doctor, is a professor of economy and public policy at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. 

The world’s most exceptional talents — the kind who can change the course of history — are not born only in certain countries. They emerge with equal probability across the globe. If Korea can attract such brilliant minds from around the world, it could become a decisive source of national competitiveness.

The United States, a country defined by overwhelming innovation, offers the clearest example. Four of the CEOs of the country’s seven largest Big Tech companies are immigrants. Nvidia’s Jensen Huang is a 1.5-generation immigrant from Taiwan. Ugur Sahin and his wife, the German scientists who developed the mRNA vaccine that helped save the world, also come from Turkish immigrant families.

In that sense, the Justice Ministry’s recently announced “2030 Future Strategy for Immigration Policy” is both welcome and encouraging. It marks the first time the government has clearly expressed, at a national level, its intention to attract highly skilled foreign talent. But revising the visa system alone will not be enough. We need to imagine an inspiring scenario — one in which Korea is revived through talent.

Imagine this: A gifted 15-year-old student from Uzbekistan receives a scholarship and enrolls in an international school in Pohang, where they learn both Korean and English. They earn their undergraduate degree at Yonsei University and their doctorate at KAIST. Later, they become a Korean citizen, launch a startup in Pangyo and, by the age of 45, become the CEO of a global company. Only when such a “full life-cycle path” becomes real can immigrants fundamentally transform Korea. 

To make this possible, Korea needs an interministerial “foreign talent master plan.” The first step should be to admit young gifted students into boarding-style international schools and science high schools. The United States’ Future Leaders Exchange, or FLEX, program has brought talented teenagers from Eastern Europe to America on full scholarships since 1992, helping them move on to universities and settle into society. In this way, the United States absorbed gifted students from around the world as national assets. Likewise, foreign talent is far more likely to settle in Korea if they grow up here from a young age.

Universities are the base camps that anchor the highest-caliber talent. Talent hired by companies can leave Korea at any time if the conditions are not right. Universities, by contrast, can hold elite talent in place more stably, directly contributing to Korea’s research and development capacity while training countless future scholars and innovators. This is why Korean campuses must be filled with world-class foreign professors.

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, founded in 1991, used an extraordinary all-around package to recruit top talent from North America and Europe. It offered overwhelming salaries, an excellent research environment, on-campus housing and even international school admissions for professors’ children. As a result, it rose to become one of Asia’s top universities in just over a decade. Do we have that kind of vision and will to execute?

The reality in Korea is dismal. I still remember the day I decided to take a faculty position at Yonsei University. At the time, I had been participating in a new faculty hiring meeting at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Hong Kong offered a newly hired assistant professor an annual salary of 200 million won, equivalent to $134,300 at today's exchange rate, along with a substantial housing allowance. By contrast, salaries at Korean universities were less than half that amount and locked into rigid seniority-based pay scales. This asymmetry captures one of the most painful reasons Korea loses out in the race for top talent.

The indicators are equally disappointing. Some 85 percent of international students in Korea leave after graduation, while only 15 percent stay. The share of foreign professors at Korea’s major universities remains at just 5 to 10 percent, a sharp contrast with Hong Kong and Singapore, where the figure exceeds 50 percent.

The infrastructure for children’s education is even more troubling. Hong Kong, with a population of 7 million, operates 80 international schools at relatively affordable tuition levels. Korea, with a population of 52 million, has fewer than 30 such schools, and tuition is expensive. Even Pohang, home to POSTECH, one of the world’s leading research universities, has no international school. This is the unvarnished reality of Korea today.

The opportunity is now. Recently, the United States has been sending an exclusionary signal to foreign talent within its borders — effectively saying, “We do not want you.” Countless talented people are being pushed away by visa barriers and turning instead to Canada, Europe and Singapore. Korea, with its public safety, health care, advanced infrastructure and the soft power of a highly attractive Korean Wave, has explosive potential to become a new destination. If we leave the current barriers in place and miss this opportunity, it will be a national loss.

To seize this chance, I propose five policies that cover foreign talent across all age groups.

First, Korea should establish K-Global Schools. We should build and operate 20 to 30 high-quality international schools at affordable costs in major regional hubs, especially in provincial cities. This would also create a powerful incentive for Korean talent to relocate to regional cities for their children’s education. At the same time, Korea should bring in gifted elementary and secondary students from Southeast Asia, Central Asia and other regions, educate them at boarding schools and help them enter leading Korean universities.

Second, Korea should create an automatic permanent residency track for doctoral graduates. Foreign talent who earn doctoral degrees from major Korean universities should immediately receive F-2 residency visas upon graduation. They should then be given a clear path to permanent residency.

Third, Korea must recruit global university professors. To give universities the financial capacity to do so, Korea should lift its tuition freeze while pairing it with bold government funding. Ten English-friendly campuses should be designated at top universities. Outdated seniority-based pay systems must be abolished, and exceptional talent should be offered significant income tax reductions.

Fourth, Korea should sharply expand its K-Global Top Talent Pass. The current threshold for top-tier visas remains unrealistically high and must be eased dramatically. Requirements such as a master’s or doctoral degree from a top 100 global university, eight years of experience including three years at a Fortune Global 500 company, and earned income equivalent to three times Korea’s per capita gross national income are, in effect, a message telling people not to come. The government’s goal of attracting 350 people by 2030 is far too timid. Korea should accept at least 10 times that number — 3,500. Like Hong Kong, Korea should allow graduates of the world’s top 100 universities to stay for two years and search for jobs regardless of whether they are already employed.

Fifth, Korea needs an integrated centralized agency. Whether it takes the form of an immigration agency or an office directly under the prime minister, Korea must unify visa and settlement policies now scattered across multiple ministries. It should also standardize English-language administrative services at government offices and banks nationwide.

It has been said that “all immigration begins in search of labor, but ends with neighbors.” No country plans from the start for every immigrant to become a permanent resident. But some portion of those who enter as labor inevitably become members of the community. That is why Korea needs a philosophy that treats immigrants not merely as “labor,” but as “neighbors” who will live alongside us.

Unlike the United States or Europe, Korea is still in the advantageous position of being able to choose its neighbors. Now that the low birthrate has become entrenched, Korea urgently needs a strategic immigration policy that makes full use of that advantage.

We must complete a full life-cycle system that allows brilliant minds from around the world to come to Korea, settle here and contribute throughout their lives. At a time when Korea is enjoying a cultural golden age, this is our best chance to win the global war for talent. 

This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.