This article examines how international students can play a strategic role in "rebalancing" national talent portfolios in countries with strong ethnonational identities facing demographic decline.In Japan and South Korea, "brain linkage" facilitated through international students' transnational social capital offers a pathway to leverage foreign talent without requiring immediate, large-scale immigration reforms.oday's talent market is undergoing a period of profound transformation.Increased transnational mobility, an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven economy, demographic crises, anti-immigration sentiment, and escalating geopolitical tensions are among the key forces reshaping national and global labor markets.These forces compel states to reassess the foundations of their talent strategies: how they cultivate, attract, integrate, and retain human capital.This essay examines how international students, often underestimated or narrowly viewed through a "brain drain/brain gain" lens, can play a strategic role in "rebalancing" national talent portfolios.Japan and Korea offer instructive cases given their demographic crises, evolving but still restrictive immigration policies, and growing yet underutilized populations of international students.
Gi-Wook Shin (Wed,) studied this question.