South Korea is facing a number of challenges. Not unlike other advanced economies in Asia, the country is confronted with a declining working-age population, reduction in birth rates, and risk of long-term stagnation.

A team of Stanford researchers at Stanford’s Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC), in collaboration with other scholars from around the world, is increasingly thinking about those challenges and is working on a number of research initiatives that explore potential solutions in leveraging benefits from globalization.

The researchers propose that Korea can extract value from two major movements of people – outflows of its own population (diaspora) and inflows of foreigners (immigrants and visitors), all of whom hold the capacity to build social capital – a network of people who have established trust and in turn spread ideas and resources across borders.

Engaging diaspora

Emigration is traditionally viewed as a loss of human capital – ‘brain drain’ – movement of skills out of one country and into another, but Stanford professor Gi-Wook Shin and Koret Fellow Joon Nak Choi support an alternative view of outward flows of citizens.

Shin and Choi suggest that people who leave their countries of origin but never return can still provide value to their home country through ‘brain linkage,’ which advocates that there is economic opportunity in cross-national connections despite a lack of physical presence. This concept is a focus of their research which was recently published in the book Global Talent: Skilled Labor and Mobility in Korea.

“What we’re trying to do is to extend the thinking – to not just look at potential losses of having your people go abroad but also the potential gains,” Choi said. “Previous studies have found that if you have more of these relationships or ‘brain linkages,’ you have more trade and more flow of innovations between countries.”

People who stay in a host country become participants in the local economy and often conduct influential activities such as starting companies, providing advice and sitting on boards of directors, Choi said, and these transactions enact flows of resources from home country to host country and vice versa.

Choi, who outside of his fellowship is an assistant professor at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, said that this way of thinking pulls away from a zero-sum view of the world and instead sees it as “more globalized, cosmopolitan and diffuse.”

He leads a research project with Shin focused on global talent and cultural movement in East Asia, and over the past quarter, taught a graduate seminar on the Korean development model.

“Cross-national ties are harder to establish than those that are geographically close, but they provide invaluable means of sharing information and brokering cooperation that may otherwise be impossible on other levels,” said Shin, who is also the director of Shorenstein APARC. “In many ways, social ties can be a good strategy to gain a competitive edge. This is an area we endeavor to better understand through our research efforts on Korea.”

Shin has described his own identity of being a part of the very system they are studying. He grew up in Korea, arrived in the United States as a graduate student and has since stayed for three decades and frequently engages the academic and policy communities in Korea.

One cross-national initiative that he recently started is a collaborative study between scholars at Shorenstein APARC and Kyung Hee University in Seoul. The two-year study evaluates the social capital impact of a master’s degree program at the Korean university that trains select government officials from developing countries.

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An international cohort including many researchers from Stanford’s Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center have been conducting group interviews with international students at Korean and Japanese universities to better understand their motivations to stay or go following their completion of a degree or non-degree program at Korean universities. Their initial results reveal that gaps in cross-cultural understanding and opportunities cause feelings of disassociation, but recent internationalization efforts are helping to address those gaps and support innovation, knowledge sharing and local economic growth. An op-ed on the topic authored by Stanford professor Gi-Wook Shin and Yonsei University associate professor Rennie Moon can be viewed here. Credit: Flickr/SUNY – Korea/crop and brightness applied

Harnessing foreign skilled labor

Globalization has also led to migration of people to regions that lack an adequate supply of skilled workers in their labor force. This new infusion of people is an opportunity to bridge the gap, according to the researchers.

“In order to be successful, countries need a large talented labor pool to invest in,” said Yong Suk Lee, the SK Center Fellow in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and affiliate of the Korea Program. “Innovation is not something like a technology ladder which has a more obvious and strategic trajectory, it’s more about investing in people and taking risks on their ideas.”

Korea currently has a shortage of ‘global talent’ – individuals who hold skills valuable in the international marketplace. Yet, Korea is well positioned to reduce the shortage.

The country produces a vast amount of skilled college graduates. Nearly 70 percent of Koreans between the age of 25 and 34 have the equivalent of a bachelor’s degree. Korea has the highest percentage of young adults with a tertiary education among Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. Another study found that the foreign student population in Korea has risen by 13 percent in the past five years.

Universities are moving to “internationalize” in seeking to both recruit faculty and students from abroad and to retain them as skilled workers in the domestic labor force. A new book published by Shorenstein APARC Internationalizing Higher Education in Korea: Challenges and Opportunities in Comparative Perspective assesses efforts by institutions in Korea, China, Japan, Singapore and the United States through nine separately authored chapters.

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Shin and Yonsei University associate professor Rennie Moon, who served as book editors and chapter authors, found that Korea has on average more outbound students (students who leave Korea to study elsewhere) than inbound students (international students who come to Korea to study). The figure above compares five countries and finds that Korea and China are more outbound-driven while Singapore, Japan and the United States are more inbound-driven.

“For most national and private universities in Korea, internationalization is more inbound-oriented—attracting foreign students, especially from China and Southeast Asia,” said Yeon-Cheon Oh, president of Ulsan University and former Koret Fellow at Shorenstein APARC who co-edited Internationalizing Higher Education in Korea. “In many ways, it’s about filling up students numbers. There needs to be a balance in inbound and outbound student numbers in order for internationalization to have an optimal effect.”

International students that do come to Korea are on average not staying long after graduation, though. The researchers identify reasons being difficulty in adapting to the local culture, inability to attain dual citizenship, language barriers, and low wages in comparison to that of native Koreans; in short – it is not easy to assimilate fully.

These and other barriers facing foreigners in Korea are a focus of a broader research project led by Shin and Moon that aims to propose functional steps for policymakers striving to internationalize their countries and to shift the discourse on diversity.

Developing a narrative

The Korean government has expanded efforts to recruit foreign students to study at Korean universities – many of which now rank in the top 200 worldwide – but addressing education promotion is only one area.

“The challenge is to propose a pathway that rallies around a general narrative,” Lee said, citing a need for internationalization to be coordinated across immigration policy, labor standards, and social safety nets.

An international group of experts in Korean affairs gathered at Stanford earlier this year at the Koret Workshop to address the challenge of creating a cohesive narrative, focused on Korea as the case study. The Koret Foundation of San Francisco funds the workshop and fellowship in its mission to support scholarly solutions to community problems and to create societal and policy change in the Bay Area and beyond.

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The Koret Workshop brings together an international panel of experts on Korean affairs at Stanford. From 2015-2016, the workshops focused on higher education, globalization and innovation in Korea. Above, Michelle Hsieh (far right) speaks during a question and answer session following her presentation on Korean and Taiwanese small and medium enterprises, next to her is former U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Korea Kathleen Stephens, Stanford consulting professor Richard Dasher, former U.S. foreign affairs official David Straub, and Korea University professor Myeong Hyeon Cho.

The interdisciplinary nature of the workshop was an important aspect, according to Lee, and Michelle Hsieh, one of 27 participants of the conference that covered a range of areas from entrepreneurship to export promotion policies in Korea.

“The workshop demonstrated how internationalization of higher education – and academic research in general – can be achieved by constructing cross-cutting ties,” said Hsieh, who was a postdoctoral fellow at Shorenstein APARC from 2006-07 and is now an associate research fellow at Academia Sinica in Taiwan.

“Participating in the workshop made me realize I really miss the lively and rigorous discussions at Shorenstein APARC, where researchers are interdisciplinary with diverse backgrounds yet focused on a common research interest,” Hsieh said. “I think debate and discussion in that kind of setting can illuminate a completely different take.”

The workshop will result in a book that features multiple areas and policy directions for Korea’s development. The lessons included are also envisioned to apply to other emerging countries facing similar trends of demographic change and economic slowdown. Shorenstein APARC expects to publish the book next year.

Stanford Medicine faculty Randall Stafford, Judith Prochaska, and Michael Baiocchi held a graduate seminar at SCPKU earlier this summer which brought together students from Stanford and Chinese universities to seek solutions to China's growing problems of cancer, stroke and heart disease.  Read more.

Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) is proud to announce our four incoming fellows who will be joining us in the 2016-2017 academic year to develop their research, engage with faculty and tap into our diverse scholarly community. 

The pre- and postdoctoral program will provide fellows the time to focus on research and data analysis as they work to finalize and publish their dissertation research, while connecting with resident faculty and research staff at CDDRL. 

Fellows will present their research during our weekly research seminar series and an array of scholarly events and conferences.

Topics of the incoming cohort include electoral fraud in Russia, how the elite class impacts state power in China, the role of emotions in support for democracy in Zimbabwe, and market institutions in Nigeria. 

Learn more in the Q&A below.

Hometown: Tomsk, Russia

Academic Institution: Northwestern University

Discipline and expected date of graduation: Sociology, April 2017

Research Interests: authoritarianism, state capacity, social policy, civil society, trust, Russia and post-communist countries

Dissertation Title: The State that Betrays the Trust: Infrastructural State Power, Public Sector Organizations, and Authoritarian Resilience in Putin's Russia

What attracted you to the CDDRL Pre/post-doctoral program? I study the connection between state capacity and political regimes - the topic that is at the core of many research initiatives at CDDRL. Learning more about this work and receiving feedback for my dissertation will enrich and sharpen my analysis, while helping me to place it into a comparative context. I am looking forward to discussing my work with the faculty who study the post-Soviet region. I also will explore policy implications of my work with the help of policy experts at CDDRL.

What do you hope to accomplish during your nine-month residency at the CDDRL? Besides finishing writing my dissertation, I will workshop three working papers to prepare them for publication. The first one argues that Putin's regime used the school system to administer a large-scale electoral fraud in 2012 presidential elections; the second one shows how the networks of social organizations were used by subnational autocrats to strengthen the regime; and the third one will look at the factors that make the abuse of such organizations more difficult in some regions. In addition to these papers I will continue developing my post-graduation research project exploring the relationship between social trust and distrust, institutions, political competition, and democratization.

Fun fact: I have spent 25 years of my life in Siberia, and I can tell you: Chicago winters are worse!

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Shelby Grossman

CDDRL Postdoctoral Fellow

Hometown: Reading, MA

Academic Institution: Harvard University

Discipline & Graduation Date:  Government, Summer 2016

Research interests: political economy of development, private governance, market institutions, Sub-Saharan Africa, survey methods

Dissertation Title: The Politics of Order in Informal Markets: Evidence from Lagos

What attracted you to the CDDRL post-doctoral program? I was attracted to CDDRL largely for its community of scholars. Affiliated faculty work on the political economy of development and medieval and modern market institutions, topics that are tied to my own interests.

What do you hope to accomplish during your nine-month residency at the CDDRL? I plan to prepare a book manuscript based on my dissertation, a project that explains variation in the provision of pro-trade institutions in private market organizations through the study of physical marketplaces in Nigeria. In addition, I will continue to remotely manage an on-going project in Nigeria (with Meredith Startz) investigating whether reputation alleviates contracting frictions. I also plan to work on submitting to journals a few working papers, including one on the politics of non-compliance with polio vaccination in Nigeria (with Jonathan Phillips and Leah Rosenzweig). 

Fun fact: Contrary to popular belief, not all cheese is vegetarian. I have a website to help people determine if a cheese is vegetarian or not: IsThisCheeseVegetarian.com. 

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Daniel Mattingly

CDDRL Postdoctoral Fellow

Hometown: Oakland, California

Academic Institution: University of California, Berkeley

Discipline & Graduation Date: Political Science, Summer 2016

Research Interests: Governance, rule of law, state building, authoritarian politics, Chinese politics

Dissertation Title: The Social Origins of State Power: Democratic Institutions and Local Elites in China

What attracted you to CDDRL?  The Center has a fantastic community of scholars and practitioners who work on the areas that I'm interested in, including governance and the rule of law. I'm excited to learn from the CDDRL community and participate in the Center's events. The fellowship also provides me with valuable time to finish my book manuscript before I start teaching.

What do you hope to accomplish during your nine-month residency at the CDDRL? While at CDDRL, I plan to prepare my book manuscript and to work on some related projects on local elites and state power in China and elsewhere. 

Fun fact: I grew up on an organic farm in Vermont.

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Lauren E. Young

CDDRL Postdoctoral Fellow

Hometown: Saratoga, CA

Academic Institution: Columbia University 

Discipline & Graduation Date: Political Science (Comparative Politics, Methods), May 2016 (defense), Oct 2016 (degree conferral)

Research Interests: political violence, political economy of development, autocratic persistence, democratization, protest, electoral violence

Dissertation Title: The Psychology of Repression and Dissent in Autocracy

What attracted you to the CDDRL post-doctoral program? As a graduate of the CISAC honors program when I was an undergraduate at Stanford, I have seen first-hand how intellectually stimulating, collaborative, and plugged into policy CDDRL is. While at the center I will be revising my dissertation work on the political psychology of participation in pro-democracy movements in Zimbabwe for submission as a book manuscript, and moving forward new projects that similarly seek to understand how different forms of violence by non-state actors affects citizens' preferences and decision-making. Because of its deep bench of experts on autocracy, narco-trafficking, and insurgency, CDDRL will add enormous value to these projects.

What do you hope to accomplish during your nine-month residency at the CDDRL?  During my fellowship year, my primary goal is to revise my research on Zimbabwe into a book manuscript. I defended my dissertation as three stand-alone articles, including two experiments showing that emotions influence whether opposition supporters in Zimbabwe express their pro-democracy preferences and a descriptive paper showing that repression has a larger effect on the behavior of the poor. To prepare the book manuscript during my fellowship, I will bring in additional quantitative and qualitative descriptive evidence and tie the three papers together into a cohesive argument about how opposition supporters make decisions about participation in protest, why emotions have such a large effect on these decisions, and how this affects variation across individuals and the strategic choices of autocrats and activists.

Fun fact: During my fieldwork I took an overnight train from Victoria Falls to a southern city in Zimbabwe and hitch-hiked into a national park. It got a little nerve-wracking when night started to fall, but ended with  an invitation to a barbecue!