Circulating East to East

Quantitative Findings
Push Factors
Consistent with prior literature, push factors, including fierce competition for Chinese 
college entrance, the quality of Chinese higher education, the absence of one’s study 
field in China, and the job market conditions in China, were deemed to be important 
among Chinese students studying abroad in Korea. Among these factors, fierce competi-
tion for Chinese college entrance (
M
= 3.68, 
SD
= 1.80) was the most influential. This 
factor, in turn, was followed by the job market conditions in China (
M
= 3.57, 
SD
= 1.67) 
and the quality of Chinese higher education (
M
= 3.03, 
SD
= 1.68). The absence of one’s 
study field (
M
= 2.27, 
SD
= 1.54) was the least influential factor (see Table 3), which is 
not surprising considering the expansion of the higher education system in China.
Pull Factors
Among the pull factors, including the Korean Wave, geographic location, the quality 
of higher education in the host country, lower costs to study abroad, parents’ and 
friends’ recommendations, recruitment agency recommendations, the selectivity of the 
institution, and job market vision, the selectivity of the institution (
M
= 3.08, 
SD
= 
1.11) and parents’ and friends’ recommendations (
M
= 3.01, 
SD
= 1.18) appeared to be 
the most influential in student’s choices to study in Korea. This result aligns with the 
prior literature that determined that parents’ and friends’ recommendations often have 
a considerable influence on students’ choices to study abroad (Mazzarol & Soutar, 
2002; Yang, 2007). In a departure from students’ perspectives gathered in the inter-
views, however, the Korean Wave (
M
= 2.03, 
SD
= 1.10) appears to be the least influ-
ential predictor of student choice (see Table 4).
Relations Between Push–Pull Factors and Student Satisfaction
As indicated in Table 5, greater satisfaction with institutional facilities and greater 
satisfaction with the institutional experience were each positively related to overall 

---

Lee 
183
study-abroad satisfaction in Korea. In other words, students who reported being satis-
fied with their institution’s facilities and experience were more likely to have reported 
greater satisfaction with studying in Korea. In addition, students studying outside of 
the Seoul metropolitan area also displayed greater satisfaction. This finding aligns 
with the limited extant qualitative research that has observed that unlike Chinese stu-
dents who are studying in the Seoul metropolitan area, Chinese students outside of 
Seoul are attracted by the low tuition, low living expenses, and greater scholarship 
opportunities that institutions in those areas tend to offer (Lee, 2012).
Simultaneously, although none of the push factors were determined to have a sig-
nificant effect on student satisfaction, two pull factors, the selectivity of the institution 
and job market vision, were determined to be significantly related to student satisfac-
tion. In particular, students who chose Korea because of its prospective job market and 
vision reported their study-abroad experience to be more satisfactory. Although previ-
ous findings demonstrated that low institution selectivity was an important pull factor 
in the decision to study in Korea, counterintuitively, that selectivity negatively affected 
student satisfaction.