 The trend of South Korean students going to the Philippines to pursue university education began in the 1960s, when South Korea was still a poor country and the Philippines ranked as the region's second-most developed behind Japan.Philippine universities still have a reputation among older South Koreans for offering quality education, which is believed to have contributed to the boom in the numbers of South Korean international students coming to the country to learn English or even to enroll in degree courses.Since the 2001-02 academic year, South Korean international students have also been the largest group of foreigners studying at Philippine tertiary institutions, edging out Americans; in the 2002-03 academic year, they totalled 1,069 individuals, or 24.6% of the total 4,363 foreign students in the country, while in the following year, they numbered 726, or 34.6% of the total 2,161 foreign students.