The chamber said the memorandums of understanding were signed April 23 in Hanoi on the sidelines of a Korea-Vietnam business forum. The partner schools are Vietnam National University, Hanoi University of Science and Technology, Hanoi Industrial University and the Posts and Telecommunications Institute of Technology.
The agreements are part of a project the chamber has been pursuing with the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy since this year to attract bachelor’s-level overseas technical talent to regional areas, it said.
Under the MOUs, the universities will cooperate on selecting candidates and assessing their capabilities, running training programs in Vietnam, and developing curricula based on demand from industrial sites in South Korea. The chamber said the schools plan to begin selecting trainees in May and start training.
The chamber said the project centers on an integrated process it runs directly: selection, training and verification, matching with companies, and follow-up management. It described the approach as demand-driven, contrasting it with earlier programs that mainly recruited available workers locally and then connected them to firms.
Using its nationwide chamber network, it first identifies hiring and job needs at regional small and midsize companies, then reflects those needs in overseas training and matches candidates with firms, it said.
The chamber said it is focusing on verifying job skills required by regional companies, beyond Korean-language ability. Trainees will be evaluated on whether they can perform without additional retraining once placed in the workplace, and must complete job projects designed around real work conditions to qualify for matching.
It also said it will provide post-placement support for overseas hires, including Korean-language education and a help desk.
According to the chamber, the industrial technology labor shortage rate at small and midsize-sized workplaces in 2024 was 2.9%, about 5.8 times the 0.5% rate at large workplaces. Regional turnover was higher outside the Seoul metropolitan area at 10.7% than in the capital region at 7.3%, with Daegu at 13.9% and North Gyeongsang at 12.3%.
The chamber said it is also expanding cooperation beyond Vietnam to top universities in Indonesia, including the University of Indonesia, Gadjah Mada University and Bandung Institute of Technology.
Lee Sang-bok, head of the chamber’s Human Resources Development Project Group, said regional small and midsize companies face limits if they rely only on domestic technical workers.
“Using global professional technical talent is not an option but a necessity,” Lee said, adding that he expects the project to strengthen regional industrial competitiveness and contribute to balanced regional development and efforts to address population decline in provincial areas.
* This article has been translated by AI.
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