Guide

Academy of Korean Studies graduate admissions

There is a graduate school in Korea, funded and run by the Korean government, that waives full tuition for every international student it admits, pays many of them a monthly living allowance, and teaches one of its majors entirely in English. Almost nobody outside the field has heard of it. Here is the whole application, taken from the school's own guideline.

Written by

Sans BhatiaFounder, KoreaAdmit14 min read · Updated Jul 14, 2026

Updated Jul 14, 202614 min read

The Graduate School of Korean Studies is the graduate school of the Academy of Korean Studies, a research institution funded and administered by the Korean government. It was established in 1980 to train scholars of Korea, and it is small on purpose: about 200 students in total, roughly 110 of them international, drawn from 38 countries, at a student-to-faculty ratio of 5 to 1.

It is not a normal university, and you should understand that before you spend a month on the application. There is no undergraduate program. Everything is a master's, a doctorate, or a one-year non-degree research placement, and everything is in the humanities and social sciences as they relate to Korea. If you want to study engineering, or business, or medicine, this is the wrong school. If you want to study Korean history, philosophy, religion, music, art history, politics, sociology, or language and literature, it is one of the best-funded places in the world to do it.

What you can actually study

The school is organised into four divisions. The master's program offers 13 majors and the doctoral program 12: Korean Cultural Studies is the exception, offered at master's level only.

The school admits about 40 students a year across the degree programs, plus a couple into the research (non-degree) program. Coursework runs two years for a master's and three for a doctorate, on a two-semester year that starts in March and September, with 15-week semesters.

The money

This is the part that makes the school unusual, so it is worth being precise about what is guaranteed and what is not.

The POSCO award is restricted by nationality. As of the 2026 guideline the designated countries are Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Thailand, the United Arab Emirates and Vietnam in Asia; Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and the United States in the Americas; Germany, Italy, Poland, Slovakia, Türkiye and the United Kingdom in Europe; and Egypt, Morocco and South Africa in Africa. Korean nationals, including dual citizens, cannot be recommended for it.

Who can apply

Two gates: your nationality, and the degree you already hold.

Nationality. You must meet one of two conditions. Either you and both of your parents are foreign nationals. Or you, whether a foreign national or a Korean national living overseas, completed your education outside Korea, at a level that corresponds to Korean elementary, middle, high school and university education.

Your degree.

For the doctoral program, the guideline's Attachment 1 lists which master's majors each doctoral major accepts. Several say simply "any majors are acceptable": Korean History, Philosophy, Anthropology and Folklore, Religious Studies, Cultural Informatics and Human Geography, Political Science, Sociology, and Education. Others are narrower, and the final call rests on the courses you took and your master's thesis topic. If you are switching fields, read that attachment in the PDF above before you assume you are eligible.

The language requirement

The English score must be from a test taken within two years of the application deadline. MyBest scores and the TOEFL iBT Home Edition are both accepted; TOEFL ITP is not. The AKS TOEFL destination code is 2067. You are exempt from the English score entirely if you are a national of a country where English is an official language, or if you hold a degree from a university or graduate school where English was the medium of instruction.

The timeline

The school runs two intakes a year. Both cycles are published in the same guideline, so you can see the full shape of the year.

Two details in that table matter more than they look. The application window is eleven days long, so if you find this school in February you have very little time. And the recommendation letter deadline falls five days after the application closes, which means your recommender is still working after you have finished, and you have no way to submit it for them.

How to apply, step by step

You do not apply on the school's own website. You apply through the Korean government's Study in Korea portal.

The 16 documents

The guideline lists 16 documents, split across three moments: uploaded online during the application, emailed separately, or posted as originals only if you are selected.

A few requirements inside that list are easy to get wrong:

• Transcripts must show one of three things for your whole period of study: a CGPA with its scale (say 3.7 out of 4.0), a percentile (83 out of 100), or a class rank (5th of 50). If yours shows none of these, ask your university for an official document explaining its grading system.
• Certificates must be in Korean or English. If they are in another language, they must be translated and notarised.
• Doctoral applicants submit both degrees, bachelor's and master's, for certificates and transcripts alike.
• If you are still studying, submit a certificate of enrolment and transcripts showing your latest grades, then send the apostilled graduation certificate and final transcripts before the semester begins.

Apostille, and the exception for China

Once you are selected, your graduation certificate and transcript have to be verified, and how depends on where you studied.

Apostilles must be in English, or come with a notarised translation. Our apostille guide walks through the process country by country if this is new to you.

The money you must prove you have

To get the Certificate of Admission you need for a D-2 student visa, you send an original bank balance certificate by post, in your own name or an immediate family member's.

The statement must be current, produced within 30 days of submission. Certificates issued by banks in China must additionally show a deposit freeze of at least 30 days. If the account is a family member's, add the letter of sponsorship and a certificate of family relations. And if another institution is funding you, a scholarship confirmation from them can replace the bank documents.

How you are judged

Selection has two stages, and both matter.

Document screening. Everyone who meets the requirements is screened on their research plan, academic ability, language proficiency, and academic background as shown in the personal statement and the recommendation letter. Note what leads that list: the research plan. This is a research institution, and a five-page plan with a real question, a genuine review of prior work, and a defensible method is the document that separates applicants.

The interview. Everyone who passes the screen is interviewed, by video or in person, in a three-day window. The final decision is a comprehensive assessment of your documents, your document review score, and your interview performance. Those same scores decide the stipends. Scores are not disclosed to anyone, including you.

What the school says about AI

The guideline is unusually direct about this, and it appears three times: in the notes for applicants, and printed on both the personal statement and the research plan forms.

This is worth taking seriously rather than gaming. The interview exists partly to test whether the person in the room is the person who wrote the research plan, and a five-page plan you did not write is very hard to defend for an hour in front of scholars who know the field. Write it yourself, in your own words, and get a human to check your grammar.

The research (non-degree) program

Worth knowing about, because it is a genuine back door into the institution, and few people notice it exists. It runs for a maximum of one year. You must hold a bachelor's degree. You pay tuition (the waiver does not apply), you must register for at least one course but earn no credit for it, and an advisor is appointed within a month of your first semester. You can use the library and the dormitory, and a certificate of completion is issued if your research goes well. The application procedure, schedule and documents are the same as for the degree programs.

Living costs and the practical details

Tuition is covered, but the rest is not. Students on a D-2 visa are automatically enrolled in Korea's National Health Insurance from the day they register as a foreign resident, at roughly 75,000 KRW a month (students on an F-4 overseas Korean visa pay about 150,000 KRW). Boarding fees are yours. The campus is in Bundang, Seongnam, about an hour from central Seoul.

Beyond the money, the school lists what its small size buys you: research assistantships and work-study, free Korean language education for academic purposes, writing clinics, group tutoring, temple stays and museum visits, and financial support to present at international academic conferences.

What to do next

1. Check the nationality rule against your own family first. If you or your parents hold Korean nationality and you were educated in Korea, this route is closed and nothing else on this page matters.
2. Decide which language track you are on. If you have TOPIK 4 you can apply to any major. If you do not, and you are not willing to spend a year or two getting there, your realistic option is Korean Cultural Studies, and our guide to that English-taught master's covers it properly.
3. Ask your recommender now. They are the single most common reason a complete application fails, and you cannot fix it for them.
4. Start the research plan early. It is five pages, it is the first thing the committee reads, and it is the document you will defend at interview.
5. Download the official guideline above and check this cycle's dates yourself. The process is stable; the calendar is reissued every year.
6. If you want to compare this with the government scholarship route, read our GKS Graduate Scholarship guide and our graduate school in Korea guide.