Why do Vietnamese students run away in Korea?

At 7am on Saturday, Thanh Tung finished his 12-hour shift and returned to his room deep in a small street in Busan, South Korea. Tung finished this week, then asked for leave to limit his travel while the police searched for 161 "missing" Vietnamese students. These students were studying the Korean language program at the Korean Language Institute of Incheon National University. Tung was not on the list of 161, but he was also a runaway student.

After finishing high school, realizing that he would not be able to get into university, Tung convinced his family to let him go to Korea to study and work. Through a study abroad consulting center, Tung spent three months learning Korean and asked his parents to arrange about 200 million VND to go to Korea in mid-2017.

Ever since he applied for a D4-1 visa (issued to those who want to study Korean at Korean language schools), Tung had the intention of staying behind. His family was not in a difficult situation, but Tung still wanted to go to Korea for 5-7 years to earn capital to start a business. When his D4-1 visa was about to expire in a year, Tung dropped out of school, moved to a new place of residence, and applied for a full-time job at a factory.

Since his escape, Tung's life "is not too hard but very lonely". "Other people can freely go out, go to school, meet friends, but Tung only has to go to work and sleep. The only way Tung can relieve stress is drinking", said Viet Hoang, 20, Tung's friend and also an international student studying Korean.

Vietnamese students who have run away often work in restaurants, coffee shops, factories, or industrial parks. If they are discovered working illegally, their employers often do not report them to the police but instead put pressure on them, cutting some benefits such as salary, bonuses, and overtime. Because they no longer have identification papers and are no longer protected by the law, the workers cannot protest, Hoang said.

If the police randomly check their papers while on the road or if they are reported, international students will be deported back to Vietnam. In case of illness, hospitalization, or accident, or if they lose their papers, runaway international students will not enjoy any benefits.

However, because of the attractive income, many people choose to escape. Currently, Tung's monthly income is about 60-100 million VND, 2-3 times higher than that of international students who both study and work. Hoang said that his friend accepts a life of constant fear of being caught by the police to earn money. With only a high school diploma, if he were in Vietnam, Tung would not be able to earn that much money.

Explaining why he did not go the labor export route but instead studied abroad and then ran away, Hoang, like many other students, said that it was much more difficult. The quota for recruiting laborers for export was limited and required a certain profession, while most people who went to study language had just graduated from high school.

Planning to have a baby in 2020, Thuy Trang (22 years old, from Phu Tho) and her husband, currently living in Daegu province, South Korea, planned to drop out of school and work outside, even though they had completed one year of language study and two years of university.

Thuy Trang came to Korea in March 2017 with the hope of studying and working to pay off her family’s 300 million VND debt. After marrying her Vietnamese classmate, the couple’s debt was 600 million VND, while Trang and her husband had only sent 100 million VND back to pay off the debt.

According to Trang, Vietnamese students who go to Korea and then run away and stay illegally mainly come from three cases. One is determined to run away from the beginning, coming to Korea to study is just a formality. This number is due to the experience of older siblings, friends or relatives who are working illegally in Korea.

The second is the case of going abroad with the purpose of studying and working, but not being able to study or being lazy to study while working at a job with a good salary compared to Vietnam. The third is the case of international students who decided to go abroad to study but because they had to borrow money, when they arrived, they had difficulty paying for tuition and living expenses, so they had to drop out of school to earn money. Trang admits that she and her husband are in the third situation.

The common point of the students who go to Korea and intend to run away is that they go to study abroad through a consulting center in Vietnam, apply for a D4-1 VISA to study Korean for a year. Trang plans to have her husband drop out of school to work because she plans to have a child next year.

"If I get pregnant, my husband will definitely go out to work, saving the tuition fee of 20 million VND per month and earning more money. Once he leaves, we will stay here for a long time, try to earn enough money to pay off the debt and save 100-200 million VND to open a small restaurant in the countryside," Trang said.

Trang believes that escaping is easy because factories and stores in Korea are in great need of workers, especially hard-working people. Therefore, when working illegally for Korean owners' stores, they do not ask for work permits or health certificates, and even cover up when the police ask. "What I have to go through is really different from what I imagined when I first came here. I regretted it many times, but once I started, I had to continue," Trang said.

As a Korean language teacher at a Korean study abroad center in Ho Chi Minh City, Thuy Duong (28 years old) affirmed that no center encourages students to run away because of the severe penalties. "If a student from any center runs away, regardless of whether they are found or caught, within three months, that center will have all visa applications rejected," Thuy Duong said.

To continue operating after three months of visa denial, centers with students who have run away in Korea often have to change their names, but "it's not much better". Thuy Duong shared that, depending on the number and severity of students who have run away, many centers are also on the embassy's "restricted list". Most of these units have to stop operating or go bankrupt because there are no students registering.

At Thuy Duong Center, in order to limit the situation of international students running away, the center usually requires a deposit of 100-200 million VND which will be returned upon return to the country, or relatives must compensate the center if their children run away. In addition, the center's staff knows the address, contacts the students' relatives and keeps the original copies of some necessary documents, usually the household registration book.

"My center is lucky to have not had any cases of escape. However, I think the important thing is the awareness of international students. If they want to stay and earn money, the center cannot stop them," Thuy Duong said.

*Character names in the article have been changed.

On December 10, Incheon National University reported to the police that more than 160 Vietnamese students enrolled in a Korean language program had gone missing for unknown reasons. The program they were enrolled in began four months ago and lasted for a year.

On December 12, Mr. Pham Quang Hung, Director of the Department of International Cooperation (Ministry of Education and Training) said that the Vietnamese Embassy in Korea has worked with the Korean Language Institute of Incheon National University. The university is coordinating with the Immigration Department to determine where the student is going.

The Ministry of Education and Training will investigate the 161 students' study abroad methods, whether they went through study abroad consulting organizations or not, and check whether those organizations violated regulations to determine how to handle them.