which North Korean authorities have recently become more reluctant to issue. Major North Korean universities, such as the Kim Il-sung University and the Pyongyang University of Foreign Studies, send a few dozen exchange students to Peking University and other top-ranked Chinese universities each year. In June 2012, the Los Angeles Times reported that Beijing and Pyongyang had signed an agreement to grant as many as 40,000 industrial trainee visas to North Koreans to permit them to work in China per year; the first batch of workers arrived earlier in the year in the city of Tumen in Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture. There have been reportedly 130 North Korean state-run restaurants in 12 countries, with most in China. Two have been found in Beijing, three in Shanghai, and others in Dandong. South Koreans After the 1992 normalization of diplomatic relations between the PRC and South Korea, many citizens of South Korea started to settle in Mainland China; large new communities of South Koreans have subsequently formed in Beijing, Shanghai, Dalian and Qingdao. The South Korean government officially recognizes seven Korean international schools in China (in Yanbian, Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Yantai, Qingdao, and Dalian, respectively), all founded between 1997 and 2003. Most of the population of Koreans in Hong Kong consists of South Korea migrant workers. Typically, they come to China as employees of South Korean corporations on short-term international assignments or as employers of South Korean businesses operating in China handling Chinese workers; when their assignments are completed, many prefer to stay on in China, using the contacts they have made to start their own consulting businesses or import/export firms. Other South Koreans moved to China on their own after becoming unemployed during the 1997 financial crisis; they used funds they had saved up for retirement to open small restaurants or shops. The low cost of living compared to Seoul, especially the cheap tuition at international schools teaching English and Chinese, is another pull factor for temporary South Korean migration to Mainland China but usually after this period, those that have moved have mostly gone back to Korea. The number of South Koreans in China was estimated to be 300,000 to 400,000 ; at the 2006 rate of growth, their population had been expected to reach one million by 2008. By 2007, the South Korean Embassy in Beijing stated their population had reached 700,000. However, due to the global economic downturn