Governments sponsor student-mobility programs with the expectation that students will build a more favorable and informed opinion of the host country which, in turn, will determine more favorable behavior towards the host country. Nevertheless, assessments of this logic are rare. Based on a survey of the Korean Government Scholarship Program’s alumni (n = 579), we analyze the alumni’s country image of South Korea and how this image determines their relationship maintenance behavior with South Korean people. Our findings show that the KGSP alumni’s image of South Korea partly explains the variance in their personal and professional relationship maintenance with South Koreans. Our findings show that the alumni’s emotions about South Korea influence their personal relationship maintenance behavior more than does each of the cognitive dimensions of the country image, while the functional dimension, which evaluates their beliefs about the country’s competencies and the competitiveness of its economic and political systems, has the highest influence on the alumni’s professional relationship maintenance.

政府赞助学生流动计划，期望学生对东道国建立更有利和更明智的意见，这反过来将决定对东道国更有利的行为。然而，对这种逻辑的评估很少见。基于对韩国政府奖学金计划校友的调查（n = 579），我们分析了校友对韩国的国家形象，以及这种形象如何决定他们与韩国人的关系维护行为。我们的研究结果表明，KGSP 校友的韩国形象部分解释了他们与韩国人维持个人和职业关系的差异。我们的研究结果表明，校友对韩国的情绪对他们的人际关系维护行为的影响大于国家形象的每个认知维度，而功能维度则评估了他们对国家能力及其经济和政治竞争力的信念。系统，对校友的职业关系维护影响最大。