Nearly half of foreign companies with branches in South Korea have no plans to recruit university graduates this year, a survey showed on Wednesday.

A survey of 58 foreign firms conducted by the online recruiting agent JobKorea found that 26, or 44.8 percent, do not have plans to hire any new graduates this year.

Of the remainder, 24 companies responded that they will be looking for new employees this year. The 24 firms with recruitment plans said they will be hiring a total of 954 graduates in 2011, JobKorea said.

The remaining eight companies said their plans have not been finalized.

Of those with hiring plans, 70.7 percent will be conducting interviews in English as part of the recruitment process. However, less than a third of them said that they will set minimum requirements in English language test scores, while 34.5 percent said that they will impose such standards with regard to grades.

By Choi He-suk (cheesuk@heraldcorp.com)