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Immigrant teenagers, Korean teachers face challenges as classrooms grow more diverse

Published: 18 Jan. 2026, 14:45

Kim Nelly, a 14-year-old Kazakh national, right, and Li Jingqian, an 18-year-old Chinese national, who attend the Ansan Global Youth Center in Ansan, Gyeonggi, speak in an interview with the JoongAng Ilbo. [JANG JIN-YOUNG]

In a classroom tucked inside a youth center in Ansan, Gyeonggi, two girls — one from Kazakhstan, the other from China — sit side by side, each navigating a new language, a new culture and the uncertainty of starting over in Korea.

Their story reflects the growing diversity of Korea’s classrooms, even as the public education system struggles to meet the needs of students from multicultural backgrounds.

Kim Nelly, a 14-year-old from a Koryoin (ethnic Korean in Russia) family from Kazakhstan, and Li Jingqian, an 18-year-old from an ethnic Korean family from Hubei Province, China, are classmates at the Ansan Global Youth Center.

Their class, dubbed “Wind Class,” is a preparatory class designed to help teenagers who have recently arrived in Korea after spending their early years abroad transition into the Korean public education system. When Kim arrived in Korea in February last year, she knew only the Korean alphabet. Li didn’t even know that when she came in last May.

Li Jingqian, an 18-year-old Chinese national who entered Korea last year, takes a vocabulary test at the Ansan Global Youth Center in Gyeonggi. She misspelled the Korean word for ″China.″ [LEE YOUNG-KEUN]

These teenagers, born and raised overseas, often enter Korea late due to a parent’s marriage or a change in visa status. They typically face major hurdles settling in, including language barriers, identity confusion and strained family dynamics.

The JoongAng Ilbo visited the Wind Class on a day when students were asked to write the names of countries in both Korean and their native languages based on national flags. When the teacher showed China’s flag, Li confidently wrote “China” in Korean with an incorrect vowel, drawing laughter from her classmates.

After a year of basic Korean lessons, the two girls are just now ready to enter formal schooling.

“If I had come to Korea even a year earlier, I could have learned Korean better and started school sooner,” Kim said in Kazakh, adding that she only recently became able to read a restaurant menu.

Students pose for a picture during a class at the Hae Mill School in Hongcheon County, Gangwon, on July 8, 2024. [JANG JIN-YOUNG]

A class takes place at the Hae Mill School in Hongcheon County, Gangwon, on July 8, 2024. [JANG JIN-YOUNG]

The number of students like Kim and Li is rapidly growing. According to data released by the Ministry of Data and Statistics on Dec. 8, 2025, the number of children and teenagers from multicultural backgrounds aged 24 or younger reached 738,079 in 2024 — a 7.9 percent increase from 2023. They now make up 27.2 percent of Korea’s total multicultural population.

Among them, 366,502 are Korean nationals — such as second-generation immigrants with one Korean parent — and 371,577 are foreign nationals.

By nationality, the largest group is Vietnamese, with 200,879 people, followed by Chinese, 121,836; ethnic Koreans from China, 88,461; Uzbekistan, 31,506; the Philippines, 31,108; and Cambodia, 24,969.

This surge is closely tied to rising numbers of visa holders who are eligible for family reunification. As of November 2025, 73,973 dependents were staying in Korea on F-3 visas, often accompanying E-7-4 skilled workers or F-2-R regional talent visa holders.

“There has been a sharp rise in family visa applications, particularly from Southeast Asia,” an official from the Ministry of Justice said. “Helping multicultural youth integrate into the education system is becoming one of the most important tasks in Korea’s immigration policy.”

However, many of these adolescents never enter the formal education system. According to a report by the Justice Ministry’s Migration Research & Training Centre obtained by the JoongAng Ilbo, the non-enrollment rate among children of immigrants was 8.9 percent.

“Considering that public education is mandatory for Korean nationals, this is a relatively low enrollment rate,” the report noted.

A teacher gives a one-on-one lesson to a foreign national student at the Seoul Culture High School in Dobong District, northern Seoul, in 2025. [JUN YUL]

The problem lies in Korea’s underdeveloped education infrastructure for multicultural youth. The Korean Educational Development Institute estimates that in 2025, the number of multicultural students — defined as those with one or more foreign parents — attending elementary, middle and high schools had reached 202,208, a 4.3-fold increase from 46,954 in 2012. But the support system has not kept pace.

A teacher at a public elementary school in Gimhae, South Gyeongsang, who asked for anonymity, recalled fainting from extreme stress three years ago while teaching a class with many multicultural students. In one year, her 20-student class included children from 10 different countries, with as many as 12 students being of migrant background. Other classes at the school were in a similar situation.

“Each student’s Korean level was so different that even basic instruction or classroom management felt overwhelming,” the teacher said. Cultural misunderstandings added to the stress.

“One Uzbek girl was acting out, and her parents strongly urged me to discipline her physically,” she recalled. “They didn’t seem to understand that teachers in Korea are not allowed to hit students.”

She also struggled with a Russian student who refused to remove their hat indoors, and a Syrian student who wouldn’t follow instructions from female teachers due to cultural norms back home.

Such students who enter Korea in their adolescence face even steeper challenges. Unlike children of overseas Koreans who can secure stable visas, these students must obtain a new residency status after turning 18 or leave the country.

“The increase in newly arrived teenagers was a predictable outcome of the previous administration’s expansion of the E-7-4 visa program to address labor shortages,” Chung Ki-seon, a visiting researcher at the Institute for Social Development and Policy Research at Seoul National University, said. “Yet the central government’s systems and awareness have failed to keep up.”

Some government and civil society efforts are now underway. Since June 2025, the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education has been operating a mobile Korean language classroom program in partnership with ChildFund Korea and the multicultural education group Atti. Bilingual instructors visit under-resourced schools to provide one-on-one lessons up to 60 times a year.

“Even smart students lose confidence if they can't speak the language,” said an instructor from the program. “Korean language education must be the top priority.”

Efforts at the school level are also emerging. Hae Mill School in Hongcheon County, Gangwon, which has educated migrant youth since 2013, now teaches 55 students from 13 different nationalities with a staff of 10 teachers. In the early days, the school struggled with communication, but it eventually developed a multilingual auto-translation system using Google Sheets to break language barriers.

The school also integrates Korean students into each class to foster mutual understanding.

“I used to have biases about multicultural students, but now I don’t see them as different,” said Kim Ji-eon, a 16-year-old Korean student. Kim Min-ju, a 22-year-old Vietnamese graduate of Hae Mill School who entered Dankook University in 2024, said, “Eight years ago, I couldn’t speak any Korean and was even afraid to go to stores. But Korean friends approached me out of curiosity about Vietnamese culture, which gave me confidence.

Kim Min-ju, a 22-year-old Vietnamese graduate of Hae Mill School in Hongcheon County, Gangwon, who entered Dankook University in 2024 [KIM KYOUNG-ROK]

“To be honest, I didn’t study much,” she continued. “But ironically, by spending time with my friends and having fun, I opened up emotionally — and my Korean improved much faster.”

Hae Mill School Principal Lee Kyung-jin emphasized the importance of seeing these students as more than just language learners.

“If we focus solely on their background and language skills, we risk overlooking the fact that they are teenagers with typical adolescent concerns,” Lee said. “Our main goal is to help them graduate with emotional resilience.

“There are many students from diverse cultural backgrounds with hidden talents,” Lee added. “If we offer them the right support, they will bring new opportunities and potential to Korean society.”

This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
BY LEE YOUNG-KEUN, SON SUNG-BAE, JUN YUL [[email protected]]