Compass
The guide
Daejeon
South Korea · Asia-Pacific
Korea's research city: KAIST and the Daedeok cluster of government institutes and corporate laboratories in one place, an hour from Seoul.
Who this suits, and who it doesn’t
Suits you if you want funded research in engineering or the sciences and are content for your life to be the laboratory for a few years. Look elsewhere if you want a city, a broad job market or a career outside research — Seoul is the honest answer to all three.
The catch, and the way in
The catch
Small, quiet and built around laboratories rather than city life — and Korean is needed for almost everything outside the campus.
The way in
The research universities and institutes admit international graduate students with funding attached, and the GKS government scholarship covers a language year, tuition and a monthly allowance.
Living there
What living here is actually like
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.
How the money works
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.
The language you actually need
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 — housing, healthcare, part-time work, the social side — runs in Korean, and staying on to work here makes it non-negotiable.
The work that clusters here
Fields with a real market in this city
Engineering · Computer Science · Natural Sciences