Korea’s brain drain is worse than India’s

The EB-1·2 visa is a work visa issued by the U.S. government to highly skilled and highly educated individuals, and also grants permanent residency to their families. Even if we assume that 5,684 people are a ‘family of four,’ at least 1,400 to 1,500 top-notch brains escaped to the United States last year. The number of EB-1 and 2 visas issued to Koreans dropped to 3,318 in 2021 when COVID-19 was in full swing, but jumped back to the 5,000 level from 2022. Recently, the ‘EB-2 craze’ is spreading among science and engineering engineers and researchers at major domestic companies.

An official in the immigration consulting industry said, “We are receiving a series of inquiries not only from engineers around 10 years old, but also from lawyers, doctors, and talented people in the business and arts fields.”

Experts are concerned that the overwhelmingly high outflow of talent relative to the population will lead to a weakening of competitiveness in the high-tech industry. Choi Byeong-ho, a professor at Korea University’s Artificial Intelligence Research Institute, pointed out, “In an era of technological acceleration where artificial intelligence (AI) has become routine, if we neglect the situation where key talents turn away from Korea, future growth engines will inevitably be weakened.”

“The Nvidia employees said it was a huge hit, but I felt like I was spinning on a treadmill.”

Mr. A (39), a 10-year researcher at a large information technology (IT) company, was contemplating a change of job within the country, and last month hired a law firm specializing in local immigration in the U.S. and is preparing for highly educated independent immigration (EB-2). Every year, thousands of Korea’s top talents choose to go to the United States like Mr. A because they can develop their careers in American companies that are not stingy with performance compensation. The ever-decreasing innovative vitality of domestic companies and their children’s education issues are also factors urging them to move to the United States. Experts agree that we must quickly come up with a way to control Korea’s ‘brain drain’, which is overwhelmingly high in the world.