Challenges Confronted by Korean Students in a Chinese University: An Interview Study

During recent decades, both institutions of higher education and university students of the world are trying to become international by offering or gaining some form of international education, which has caught the attention of increasingly more researchers (Jackson, 2004; Trenchs-Parera, 2009). As East Asian students have increasingly become the majority of international students on university campuses (Xia, 2009), Chinese institutions of higher education have also been recruiting more and more international students. Nevertheless, research on international students in China has been scarce. The present interview study aimed to document the challenges Korean students had while studying full-time in a prestigious university in Beijing. Interviews with 10 senior Korean English majors revealed that they confronted a series of academic, linguistic and cultural challenges while studying in the university. Based on this finding, some implications are discussed.