ABSTRACT
Amid intensified global talent competition and domestic demographic pressures, China, Japan and South Korea (hereafter, ‘Korea’) have expanded their international student policies beyond attraction and recruitment to include stronger measures for post-study employment and retention, repositioning international students as strategic populations for the broader state agenda. Drawing on an interpretive comparative analysis of official policy documents, this study examines how the shared policy turn is articulated in China, Japan and Korea through agenda framing, goal setting and policy instrument mix. The findings show that this shared turn has not followed a common model, but rather distinct policy logics: selective channelling in China, where international graduates are incorporated selectively through talent-oriented and eligibility-based channels linked to national development priorities; coordinated labour-market incorporation in Japan, where policy emphasises facilitated transition into domestic employment; and region-linked settlement in Korea, where employment and retention are tied more explicitly to regional revitalisation and settlement. This study shows that post-study employment and retention should not be treated as a single policy project diffusing across countries, but rather as distinct policy tasks embedded in divergent political and institutional configurations.