Uzbekistan has risen to third place among countries sending students to study in South Korea. According to data from South Korea's Ministry of Education and the Korean Educational Development Institute (KEDI), 20,876 Uzbek students were enrolled in the country as of April 1, 2026, accounting for 6.8 percent of all foreign students there.
Uzbekistan trails only Vietnam (96,834 students) and China (78,890 students) in this ranking, while holding a commanding lead among countries of the former Soviet Union.
The overall number of foreign students in South Korea has also hit a record high. As of April 1, 2026, a total of 307,464 foreign nationals were enrolled in the country's universities, colleges, and various educational programs — an increase of 54,030 students, or 21.3 percent, from the previous year. This marks the first time the number of foreign students in South Korea has surpassed 300,000.
Separately, South Korea's immigration authorities reported 22,179 Uzbek citizens residing in the country for education or language study purposes. The discrepancy between this figure and the Ministry of Education's data stems from differences in how the two agencies calculate their statistics.
Interest in studying in South Korea is reportedly growing among young Uzbeks. Over the past two years, the number of schools in Uzbekistan offering Korean-language instruction has more than doubled, while nearly 50,000 people registered to take the TOPIK Korean proficiency exam over the past year.
