Six out of ten international students in South Korea who plan to work in the country after graduation hope to land a job in Seoul, according to a report released Thursday.

Choi Jeung-yun, a senior researcher at the Korea Educational Development Institute (KEDI), presented the data during an online briefing on Thursday, along with her research on how attracting foreign students can mitigate the domestic population crisis.

According to the institute, the number of international students in the country stood at 208-thousand as of last year, marking a fourfold increase from 2007, when the figure was just 49-thousand.

The number of foreign students in degree programs jumped from 32-thousand to 145-thousand over the cited period, while students enrolled in non-degree tracks, such as language programs, jumped from 17-thousand to 63-thousand.

Despite the rise, Choi noted that nonmetropolitan universities haven’t fully benefited from the influx.

The proportion of international students studying at four-year universities, colleges and graduate schools in the Seoul metropolitan area increased, and those enrolled outside the capital decreased across the board.

A KEDI survey of 316 foreign students who plan to get a job after graduating found that 62 percent hope to find work in Seoul.

However, it also found that those in Busan and Daegu hoped to find a job near their schools, suggesting that regional distribution can improve if the labor market and living conditions improve.

The researcher stressed that to attract international students to cities outside the capital region, central and local governments should coordinate with universities to secure and support such students, and that the resulting policies should be closely linked to economic and industrial development plans.