Half of Vietnamese Students in Korea Are Here for Language Study, While 93% of Chinese Students Pursue Degrees. What's Different?

Half of the Vietnamese students living in Korea came not to earn a degree, but to study the language. According to the international student management data compiled by the Korea Immigration Service under the Ministry of Justice (Public Data Portal, dataset 3069982, second half of 2025, as of December 31, 2025), of the 108,099 Vietnamese students in total, 54,535 (50.4%) are enrolled in degree programs (D-2 visa), while 53,564 (49.6%) are in language training (D-4 visa). It is almost an exact split down the middle. In other words, the number of students who came to earn a degree and the number who came to learn Korean are effectively the same.

The same statistics paint an entirely different picture for China. Of the 76,532 Chinese students in total, 70,931 are in degree programs (D-2), accounting for 92.7%, while only 5,601 are in language training (D-4), or 7.3%. That means more than 9 out of every 10 Chinese students entered a degree program from the start. Comparing the share of language trainees in each country, Vietnam (49.6%) versus China (7.3%), Vietnam's D-4 share is roughly 6.8 times that of China.

This gap is not merely a statistical difference. It signals that the very pathway by which students from the two countries enter Korea is different. Most Chinese students meet the Korean-language and documentation requirements for degree-program admission in their home country before entering directly on a D-2 visa. By contrast, half of Vietnamese students first pass through the language-training (D-4) stage. The data shows that the stepwise "language-to-degree" pathway, in which students first build their Korean ability on the ground in Korea and then convert to a degree program, is effectively the standard route for Vietnamese study abroad.

This "language first" route is a practical entry point for Vietnamese students and parents because it allows them to begin studying in Korea even without a sufficient Korean-language foundation. At the same time, the fact that nearly half of these students start out on a D-4 visa means that the key variable in planning study abroad from Vietnam is not "degree admission" but "the transition from language training to a degree." For many students, the D-4 stage is not the destination itself but a point of passage.

The challenge is that language training (D-4) and degree programs (D-2) follow different rules on the visa side. For D-4, the rules governing the renewal of period of stay, proof of financial means, attendance and academic management, and above all the design of the change of status to D-2 are applied differently than for D-2. Students who enter with only language training in mind, and then belatedly try to meet the requirements for converting to a degree program, can face additional time and cost during the renewal and conversion process. For this reason, it is safer for Vietnamese students to plan their later degree-conversion strategy (target department, required Korean-language level, method of proving financial means) at the very moment they begin the language-training stage.

In short, if Chinese students follow a structure of going "straight to a degree," then for Vietnamese students a two-step structure of "through language and on to a degree" accounts for half. The same phrase, "studying in Korea," contains two different pathways. For any family preparing for study abroad from Vietnam, the practical advice this data offers is to treat everything from the first step of language training (D-4) through degree conversion as one continuous plan, and to map out the visa journey in advance.

Methodological caveat: This analysis is based on enrolled (resident) students as of the reference date, not on new visa issuance. Because the source data contains no visa-code column, the Korean-language status strings were used to group D-2 (degree program) and D-4 (language training). The source is the international student management data from the Korea Immigration Service, Ministry of Justice (Public Data Portal, data.go.kr, dataset 3069982, second half of 2025, as of December 31, 2025, KOGL Type 1).