• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.275-294
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• 2010

In recent years, international migration of professional workers is significantly increasing as globalization has been deepened more and more. South Korea is not an exception for this case. Immigration of professional workers have steadily increased since 2000 in Korea, and the number reached approximately to 50,000 in 2009. In addition, it is a major trend that immigrants of short-sojourn are decreasing and ones of long-sojourn increasing. Our research shows that foreign language instructor has the greatest number of foreign professional immigrants. The next is professional immigrants related to business-activities. There are considerably entertainers, but they have greatly decreased since 2003. Majority of foreign professional immigrants settle down in a few metropolises. Especially, they reside in Seoul Metropolitan Area and Southeast coastal region. Professional immigrants trend to do with Korean on the base of their offices rather than residental communities in terms of adaptation, and they do not have strong will to reside permanently in Korea. Moreover, they are located at a blind spot of Korean government's foreign immigrant policy, comparing to foreign workers and female marriage immigrants.