Daejeon

A planned city that is calm and cheap by Korean standards and organised around research campuses; the fast train puts Seoul within an hour, which is how most people spend their weekends. Laboratory culture is intense and the hours are long. That is the norm here rather than a warning about one place. Outside the campuses the city is ordinary and the international community is small.

Costs sit well below Seoul's, and the routes in are usually funded rather than paid for: graduate places at the research institutes normally carry a stipend, and the government scholarship covers tuition, accommodation support and a monthly allowance. Undergraduate study without a scholarship is a different and far more expensive proposition, and worth checking before assuming Korea is cheap.Described in shape rather than figures on purpose: rents and salaries move every year and we cannot keep numbers true, but what is expensive and what quietly eats income stays true for far longer.

Research groups publish and often work in English, and the government scholarship includes a year of Korean before the degree starts. Everything outside the laboratory runs in Korean: housing, healthcare, part-time work, the social side. Staying on to work here makes it non-negotiable.