Two years into the pandemic, many universities are already planning to conduct lectures in person this spring semester, in hopes of resurrecting the vibrant atmosphere on campus and in line with the government’s plan of phased recovery. This comes amidst South Korea’s largest COVID-19 surge to date, hitting a record high of more than 170,000 cases on February 23, and though experts warn this number may continue to rise, deaths and critical cases remain relatively low. While colleges are officially reopening classrooms for its students, international students from a select few countries remain prohibited from applying for student visas and entering South Korea — an entry ban that is yet to be lifted since 2020.

Since the first few months of the pandemic, South Korea has declared some countries as “high-risk” due to their high rates of COVID-19 infections. The issuance of long- and short-term visas for these countries were suspended across all visa types. Passengers departing from these countries were subjected to stricter quarantine protocols, requiring a valid RT-PCR test taken within 24 hours (later changed to 72 hours) before the scheduled flight. This list was amended regularly over time, with some countries being removed while new countries were added (*). Many of these countries were included in response to variant-triggered COVID surges. However, some countries, like Pakistan and the Philippines, have consistently made the list. Whereas issuance of visas were resumed in the last two years for particular visa types, such as diplomatic and humanitarian visas, the suspension of student visa (D-2/D-4) issuance was never lifted.

Last year, however, it was announced that recipients of the Global Korea Scholarship (GKS) and the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) scholarship would be exempted from the suspension and allowed to apply for student visas. The GKS and KOICA scholarships are government-funded scholarships offered annually for international undergraduate and graduate students. Strangely, other government scholarships are not included in the exemptions. Students from government-supported science institutes like KAIST, UNIST, DGIST, and GIST, who essentially are scholars of the Korean government, are also not exempted, prompting confusion about the rationale behind the change. 

Even if all the aforementioned scholarships were included, the policy change still makes no sense. What difference does it make if the costs of an international student’s education are shouldered by themselves or by the Korean government? Travel bans and visa restrictions were understandably put in place to slow the spread of COVID and its variants, but the pandemic has now reached a stage where governments of the world — including South Korea — have begun lifting such restrictions to “return to normal”. And considering South Korea has opened its doors to travelers from most countries, including countries like Singapore where surges remain strong, one can hardly think that the government is concerned about imported cases anymore. In fact, they shouldn’t be: even though daily cases are at an all-time high in the country, imported cases remain steadily low — less than 1% of total daily cases — likely due to the vaccination, testing, and quarantine requirements imposed on travelers. These guidelines will have to be followed by any inbound international students, who are equally susceptible to contracting the virus regardless of who funds their education. So why are international students from a handful of countries being singled out as a cause for concern?

The stranded students have tried all sorts of “diplomatic” avenues to rally their causes. The respective ambassadors of their countries to South Korea have been continuously conducting discussions with relevant authorities, representing the students’ best interests. But all that has been received in return were template responses and half-baked excuses for not allowing entry. The high case counts of the banned countries have been so abused as a reason. Another repeated argument is the significant number of imported cases from these countries despite being required to submit a negative RT-PCR certificate upon departure. One only needs to look at the case counts of other countries whose citizens are allowed to enter South Korea to see that these arguments are flawed. For instance, the US is tallying record numbers yet their travelers are still allowed to apply for Korean visas. At some point, South Korea was even having more than 100 imported cases from the US alone in one day!

It has also been argued that officials are skeptical about letting in more students due to the increasing number of students testing positive for COVID within Korea, as if university students are somehow more vulnerable to the virus. Do students possess a unique gene that makes them more likely to be infected? And what exactly is the supposed connection between students stranded outside Korea and those students in Korea getting infected? Most of the students currently in South Korea have only started receiving their vaccine shots in the second half of last year. Meanwhile, students waiting for their visas had already been fully vaccinated in their home countries as early as April and have now also received their third doses. Students who need to enter Korea are in fact already protected from the virus, less likely to infect others or burden the Korean healthcare system. 

This time around, the government’s reasoning is about the ongoing surge in South Korea. After banning several countries because of their own surges, they now refuse to acknowledge the improving situations in these countries and relieve the restrictions they imposed against students for two years. Ironically, despite the sharp increase in domestic cases in South Korea, restrictions such as curfew hours and social distancing measures are more relaxed than they were during the previous surge. The reality is, the sensitivity — or, perhaps, insensitivity — of the South Korean government in allowing students to enter the country is founded not on valid and reasonable grounds, but on a long, feeble string of excuses made solely to avoid recognizing the need of students to return. 

As a result, students are forced to suffer the consequences of this irrational policy. Despite classes being officially held “online”, certain academic activities are permitted to be conducted in-person depending on the nature of the work, such as for research or lab-related work. This puts graduate students who cannot come to Korea at a disadvantage, since research is essential for their graduation. Forcing these to be conducted online undermines the quality of their outputs, which then undermines the quality of their whole education — the very reason why they chose to study in Korea in the first place. The gradual return to in-person lectures means that some courses are held completely offline, which limits the options of students when registering for courses. Some degree programs even require full physical presence, since they have immersion projects as a requirement for graduation. 

This incapacity to fulfill duties as a student leaves stranded individuals with very few options to salvage their education. Some are taking a leave of absence, but for students from other universities, there is a limit to how long they can remain on leave. Others cannot take a leave since it will result in the termination of their own scholarships. As for the rest, they simply continue their studies, settling with whatever scraps are left for them to take. It is unfortunate that some students began their studies during the pandemic and have now graduated without ever stepping foot in Korea. There are even those who have left their previous jobs to pursue graduate studies in Korea, only to be stuck in their home countries with no source of income that they were expecting from their education abroad.

In rare, extreme instances, some universities have even encouraged newly-admitted students to reconsider confirming their admission, especially if they won’t be able to fly to Korea. Since their degree programs cannot be converted online, the universities are considering handing over  scholarships to other students who can maximize the opportunities (i.e., those who are not victims of visa restrictions). It sounds unfair and discriminatory, but can we really blame them? Universities have been adapting to the situation and accommodating stranded international students for almost two years. They have adjusted their policies and given extra consideration for their students who couldn’t be on campus.

And yet, the South Korean government seems so fixated in enforcing band-aid solutions — if you could even call them “solutions” — to the problems they continue to cause and can so easily address. Their only approach is to direct universities to be more accommodating to their students and not penalize them for their inability to be present on campus. But universities are not “penalizing” their students; they simply don’t know what else to do. They have adjusted to the government’s abrupt policies since the beginning of the pandemic, and have ever since tried their very best to help students stranded abroad. Universities have already done so much in the last two years and cannot do so much more — they, too, are left with no options.

The fact that the government resorts to this kind of approach is very telling of how ignorant and ungrounded their policies are from the realities of universities and its students. They must be thinking that since classes are “online” (even though it’s actually not fully online due to hybrid lectures), the need of students to return isn’t as urgent as it is, and that they can still push this aside for later consideration. And yet a simple, magnified look into the situation within universities would tell an entirely different story of fatigue and helplessness from both the students and universities. The government’s actions are setting a dangerous notion here that the situation of stranded students is a problem that universities should solve, and that any struggles that these students face lie within the universities’ fault, when in fact it is the universities that have done everything they can to accommodate students in the past two years amidst government inaction.

The government must snap their heads out of their fantasies and stop convincing themselves that they have breathing space to set this situation aside for reconsideration at another time. Everyone else involved in the equation has adapted to the extent of their abilities. Now it’s time for the South Korean government to recognize that the only entity left who needs to act is them. There is no more alternative to letting students fly to Korea. They should stop pinning the responsibility to universities to fix the mess that their policies created. 

For a country that has set the gold standard of national response in the first few months of the pandemic, South Korea is now doing extremely horribly in its treatment of inbound foreign arrivals, especially students. Countries that have imposed stricter regulations such as Japan and Australia have already announced reopening its borders for students. The US and most European countries have been open to foreign students since last year. Singapore has also been accommodating students and is now expanding its Vaccinated Travel Lane (VTL) to more countries, acknowledging that vaccinated people pose no great risk to healthcare systems. Yet South Korea remains stubborn in its irrational policy of banning students from a select few countries, almost as baffling as its loosening of restrictions within the country in the middle of its biggest surge. 

But at the end of the day, what is there for South Korea to worry about? Their global reputation still shines bright; international student enrollment remains constant even in the pandemic, giving them the same statistical benefits in international rankings despite having no intentions of letting these students into their country. On the surface, they’re “better” than their neighboring countries that restricted students from all nations, since they didn’t fully close their borders to students save for a “few” countries. South Korea’s image stays sterling, while the students’ education is played with, their welfare ignored, and their futures put on hold. They are few enough to be overlooked but somehow also numerous enough to be regarded as risks. One hopes that, for once, the government will look beyond the numbers and see the stories behind them: students who placed their trust and their hopes in the promise of South Korea and its reputability, and are now at its sole mercy.

(*) As of January 28, the 19 countries in the list are: Philippines, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, UK, Myanmar, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, Eswatini, Mozambique, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Ghana, and Zambia.