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Reading a Korea Scholarship Offer: What Is Included in Your Budget?

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A Korean scholarship offer is a budget only for the items the award document names. For the Global Korea Scholarship (GKS), the published guidelines describe a monthly allowance, tuition support, economy airfare and a Korean language year, but they also list items that are not covered. The way to read an offer is to split every cost into “named in writing”, “partly covered” and “not mentioned”, and to ask the scholarship office about anything in the last group.

Start with what the award says in writing

According to Study in Korea, GKS undergraduate benefits include airfare, Korean language training fees, tuition and monthly allowances, followed by a degree programme. Copy the same items from your own offer letter into separate rows: programme name, period covered, tuition, allowance, airfare, insurance and housing. If a row is blank in the letter, mark it “unknown” instead of assuming it is included.

How the undergraduate figures are described

The 2027 GKS undergraduate (GKS-U) guidelines give these amounts:

  • Monthly allowance: 13,560,000 KRW per year during the Korean language programme and 14,400,000 KRW per year during the degree programme. Spread over twelve months, that works out to 1,130,000 and 1,200,000 KRW a month.
  • What the allowance is meant to cover: the guidelines describe it as an all-inclusive subsidy for living expenses, accommodation, health insurance, Korean proficiency grants, TOPIK application fees, settlement allowance and degree completion grants. That means there are no separate payments for those items in this programme.
  • Tuition: NIIED covers up to 5 million KRW a year, and the university covers any amount above that plus admission fees.
  • Airfare: an economy-class ticket at actual expense.

The point for your budget is that housing and insurance come out of the allowance for undergraduate scholars. A reader who sees a monthly figure and assumes separate housing support would plan wrongly.

How a graduate offer can look different

A Korea University Graduate School page on the GKS lists graduate benefits as separate lines: a monthly allowance of 1,000,000 KRW, a settlement allowance of 200,000 KRW on arrival, a research allowance of 210,000 KRW (humanities and social sciences) or 240,000 KRW (natural and mechanical sciences), medical insurance of 20,000 KRW monthly, a Korean proficiency grant of 100,000 KRW monthly for TOPIK levels 5 and 6, and a reimbursement of 500,000 to 800,000 KRW for dissertation printing. It also lists round-trip economy airfare, language training fees, and tuition waived by the host institution.

The undergraduate and graduate descriptions are structured differently, so do not copy line items between them. Use the guideline for your own programme and cycle.

What the guidelines say is not covered

The GKS-U guidelines state several exclusions:

  • Domestic travel within your home country and international travel insurance are not covered.
  • Entry airfare is not provided to scholars already living in Korea at the time of the final announcement, or to scholars entering from a third country.
  • Evening programmes, short-term programmes, and online or distance learning are not eligible.

The guidelines also say that a scholar who withdraws within the first three months after enrolling must return the full scholarship amount, and that once a scholarship is renounced it cannot be reversed. Those are financial conditions as much as administrative ones.

Conditions and timing to confirm with the office

Ask the scholarship office or the university, in writing, about the following points. Your offer letter may already answer some of them.

  1. When each payment arrives. A gap between arrival and the first payment affects your first-month cash needs.
  2. Whether the language year and the degree years are paid at the same rate.
  3. What happens if you reach a TOPIK level that exempts you from the language programme. The GKS-U guidelines say levels 5 and 6 can lead to exemption.
  4. Whether the university charges any fees that fall outside the tuition coverage, such as admission fees, which the guidelines say the university covers above the NIIED amount.
  5. Which costs the award does not mention at all, such as a deposit for housing or personal expenses.

Common mistakes and what to verify

Most budget surprises come from reading a summary instead of the document. Go through the list below against your own offer letter.

  • Treating the headline as the budget. Study in Korea also lists university scholarships covering 30 to 100 percent of tuition, which is a different thing from a full award with an allowance. Check which kind you were offered.
  • Counting one-off items twice. In the undergraduate guideline, settlement and insurance are part of the allowance.
  • Forgetting your own travel costs. Domestic travel in your home country is not covered.
  • Assuming airfare applies in every case. Scholars already in Korea, or travelling from a third country, are excluded from entry airfare.
  • Using an outdated figure. Amounts are set each cycle in the official guidelines.

Rules change: confirm with the official body

This article is general information, not financial or legal advice. Scholarship amounts, coverage and conditions are set by NIIED and the host institutions and can change from one cycle to the next. Confirm your own figures with the Study in Korea portal, the Korean embassy that handled your application or the university’s international office, and keep the written offer for reference.

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