Introduction to the special issue—Global Korea Scholarship: Empirical evaluation of a non‐Western scholarship program from a public diplomacy perspective

Abstract

Most governments offer scholarships for international students as part of their public diplomacy toolbox. However, empirical assessments of these programs are relatively rare. The limited number of existing works often concern Western countries, while international student mobility programs in non-Western countries remain insufficiently researched. This special issue addresses these two gaps in the literature. All the articles utilize a unique and rich dataset of the perspectives of Global Korea Scholarship (GKS) recipients about South Korea. This dataset consists of four surveys conducted in 2018 and 2019 of GKS students, alumni, and pre-arrival inbound students. There are over 200 variables, most of which are about GKS recipients' cognitive and affective evaluation of Korea, their Korea-related behaviors, their perceptions of how they are treated by Koreans, their satisfaction with studying in Korea, satisfaction with university and language school, and integration into Korean society. The articles look at various aspects of GKS as a public diplomacy tool, including the determinants of positive recommendations toward Korea as a study or tourism destination, the relationship between behavioral experience, symbolic environment and communication behaviors, determinants of students' intentions to stay in the host country, gendered dynamics of the scholarship, students' perspectives on justice based on their experiences in, and beliefs about, the host country, and the determinants of students' satisfaction with life in Korea.

Moving to a new phase in public diplomacy research

“…They found that the development paths of both institutions were closely related to the development and transformation of Sino-US political relations. Comparative analysis appeared also in specific areas of PD such as cultural diplomacy (Kizlari & Fouseki, 2018), digital diplomacy (Bjola & Jiang, 2015), international exchanges (Mawer, 2017;Ayhan & Snow, 2021), sports diplomacy (Kobierecki, 2020), and diaspora diplomacy (Gilboa, 2022).…”