Originally Posted by
asiafever
A number of factors.
Korea is facing a demographic crisis, birthrates have plummeted over the past number of years, the economy has slowed, unis are predicting a drastic decline in local enrolments over the next 2 decades. The number of koreans travelling overseas for studies has halved since 2017. Globally it has dropped in the region of 60% since 2010. In Australia the figures are worse, more like a 65% drop. One of the reasons kids used to study overseas was that it was seen to be beneficial in securing higher level employment on return, but that trend has also died, with employers preferring local talent now as they're seen as more likely to survive the intense korean work culture.
Add to that it became kind of a widespread innuendo that a youngish pretty girl going to Australia on a WH, student visa or similar was going there to do sex work. I know a Korean girl, not in the industry, who'd been living here 10 years, went back to visit family, and the taxi driver once he asked "Where have you come from?" and she answered "Sydney" went on a rant about Korean girls going to Sydney to work as hookers. As you can imagine she was hugely offended, but it didn't stop his continued insistence that she must work as a sex worker of some sort as she "is pretty enough". And that's nowhere near an isolated incident, I hear it quite often. But sure that's anecdotal..
Other factors could include Korea took longer to emerge from Covid and was hit harder than we were, an ageing population with fewer kids means those kids won't want to leave ageing parents, not culturally acceptable behaviour. Also lots of girls trying to pursue a "career" as an influencer...
The days of an abundance of Korean girls arriving regularly are gone is the summary answer.