Anyone studied in Daegu?

Daegu is a real option and the cost difference is the largest of any of the main student cities. The trade-offs are specific.

What you save: tuition typically 300,000 to 600,000 won less per term than the Seoul programs, and rent 30 to 40 percent lower. A one-room near a Daegu campus can be 350,000 to 450,000 won a month with a small deposit — that is goshiwon money in Seoul. Over a year, students commonly save 4,000,000 to 6,000,000 won total compared to Seoul.

What daily life is like: Daegu is Korea's fourth city, about 2.4 million people, with a full subway system, a large student population, and a proper city centre. It is not a small town. The international community is smaller than Seoul or Busan but it exists and it is tight-knit.

The specific things to weigh:

1. Very few people will speak English to you. This is excellent for your Korean and hard for your first month.

2. Summer. Daegu is the hottest city in Korea by a margin and July and August are genuinely severe — regularly 36 to 38 degrees with high humidity. If you are enrolling for the summer term, know this.

3. Part-time work is scarcer and pays the same minimum wage, but tutoring rates are lower than Seoul.

4. Travel. KTX to Seoul is under two hours, so weekends in Seoul are easy. Incheon is a longer haul for international flights.

5. Fewer schools, so switching institutions locally is not really an option.

Who it suits: students on a tight budget who are serious about the language and comfortable being one of few foreigners. Who it does not suit: students who want a large international social scene or plan to fund a lot of their costs through part-time work.

If the budget is the deciding factor, Daegu is the strongest value case in the country.