I'm in my first term as a CS PhD student at KAIST in Korea.
I'm getting a Korean government scholarship, which is about 2 or 3 times the amount what my labmates get from their various sources of funding (private companies, government, others). The cost of living here is lower than the U.S. or Japan and while health insurance is not included in the scholarship, it is also relatively cheap in Korea.
My Korean language skills aren't good yet, so I'm taking classes that are taught in English. Textbooks are all in English and of course all research papers are written in English. So while you can get by with just English, I feel like I miss out a lot by not being able to fully understand Colloquiums or discussion in the lab. But one of the reasons why I came to Korea was to improve my Korean, wanting to be more involved in the lab is good motivation.
Culturally, there are many labs whose Professors are rather dictatorial. Indeed, students are expected to pay more respect to Professors than in the US and even do errands and such (like clean the Professor's office), but there are many Professors who like to teach/advise in a more collaborative manner. My Professor is one of them and his teaching style is one of the reasons I came to KAIST.
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I'm getting a Korean government scholarship, which is about 2 or 3 times the amount what my labmates get from their various sources of funding (private companies, government, others). The cost of living here is lower than the U.S. or Japan and while health insurance is not included in the scholarship, it is also relatively cheap in Korea.
My Korean language skills aren't good yet, so I'm taking classes that are taught in English. Textbooks are all in English and of course all research papers are written in English. So while you can get by with just English, I feel like I miss out a lot by not being able to fully understand Colloquiums or discussion in the lab. But one of the reasons why I came to Korea was to improve my Korean, wanting to be more involved in the lab is good motivation.
Culturally, there are many labs whose Professors are rather dictatorial. Indeed, students are expected to pay more respect to Professors than in the US and even do errands and such (like clean the Professor's office), but there are many Professors who like to teach/advise in a more collaborative manner. My Professor is one of them and his teaching style is one of the reasons I came to KAIST.
So far my experience has been a positive one.