Word Count: 1,130

“Insights on Education in South Korea as Institution and as

Industry”
A REFLECTION PAPER

Introduction

The film begins as an undivided Korea rises from the ashes of the
World War II, unshackling itself from Japanese rule in 1945. Even then,
Koreans already had this thirst for knowledge, amidst the ruins and rubble of
war. However, this yearning for normalcy to undertake a national education
program was set back with the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950.
Beginning 1953 when major hostilities between the North and the South had
ceased, the new nation of South Korea embarked on a 50-year journey
beginning the early to mid-1950’s to where it was in year 2000. Instead of
trying to determine what was in store for Korean education for the decade
2001 to 2010, for purposes of this reflection paper, the time horizon
shall now be re-dated to 2011 to 2020.

Education as a Social Institution

As an undivided peninsular nation prior to the 18th century, Korea

thrived as a kingdom with strong Confucian precepts. In this society, the
educated individual was most respected, and in fact cornered the best jobs
in the old civil service system. This age-old tradition of esteem for education
was carried into the 20th century, so much so that as war ravaged the
country, first in WWII and then during the Korean War, a starving Korean
population would trade some of its meager resources (which was already
barely enough for food) for the chance to send their children to makeshift
classrooms and earn an education, though humble as it was at that time.
This became the chief mode of upward social mobility, meaning the
Koreans believed in the ability of one individual’s education to totally lift him
out of his current station in life. A case in point in the movie was a lady
farmer scrimping on her meager earnings to be able to send her children to
school, making a determined promise not to see her children end up as
farmers, just like her.

But more importantly, Koreans saw education as a social institution

that would singlehandedly engineer the economic turnaround of a rural, war-
torn country into a prosperous and self-reliant nation belonging to a global
community. This was borne out of its ugly memory of Japanese occupation,
which collectively made South Korea even more determined to make
education a centerpiece of its national growth strategy.
Education as an Industry

It would be useful to analyze the South Korean system of education

using the framework developed by Michael Porter, referring to The Five
Forces that Shape Industry. For this paper, let us focus on three of the five:
BUYERS, SUPPLIERS and the DYNAMICS OF COMPETITION.

The Buyers, in this case, would be the companies and organizations

(both local and abroad) as well as the South Korean government that employ
the graduates produced by the education sector. The Suppliers would be the
individual Korean families that send their members to schools and training
institutions, and even the Korean government that similarly invests in
sending its citizens.

A confluence of the two brings about the Dynamics of Competition,

where we see graduates of schools and training institutions competing for a
finite number of available jobs in the market, and in return their viability for
employment depending on their level of education or training and its fit vis-
à-vis the requirements of that job. This is further constrained by the entry of
foreign workers offering similar circumstances, as well as the declining
number of jobs in a particular segment of the labor market if the companies
or organizations in that labor segment move towards employing more
machines or products of technology.

To begin with, any investment by the South Korean government in

providing education for its people was assured a high return on
investment (profitability) because this became the primary means for its
citizens to move from low income to higher income jobs.

The average Korean’s competitiveness lay in the fact that the entire
population enjoyed guarantees to universal primary education (6 years in
elementary), plus the added encouragement from government who saw to it
that secondary education would be an increasing priority over the years:
from a mere 30% of Koreans finishing high school in the 1950’s to an
incredible 100% by the 1990’s. The net effect of this was a large mass of
highly-educated Koreans, able to cater to the requirements of a steady
increase of high-income jobs as the Korean economy, and which such higher
incomes spurred even more growth.

Add to this the shift from a traditional view of allowing masses of

Korean women to remain uneducated to freeing up the schools to take them
in, further widening the pool of available individuals ready for the jobs
market. Plus, this had the added benefit of contributing to the population
control efforts of the government because it was able to better reach child-
bearing Korean women and inform them on family planning methods.
 Another factor underpinned the competitiveness of the Korean system
of education: the willingness of Korean parents to invest in their children’s
education (matching the government’s willingness to do so).

The education system was not without its problems. The tendency
towards mass-producing Korean graduates also led to declining standards
(allowing the proliferation of tutoring or “cram” schools) as well as a
“pressure-cooker” environment - which saw Korean students enjoying their
education experience less and less. This stifled creativity and innovation
among them.

Korean Education for the Next Decade (2011-2020)

The curriculum has undergone major revisions seven times since 1954,
to “reflect the newly rising demands for education, emerging needs of a
changing society, and new frontiers of academic disciplines.” 1 A recent
update, known as the Seventh Curriculum, aims to prepare students for the
knowledge-based, globalized 21st century. With this objective in mind, it
emphasizes individuality, creativity, and knowledge of Korean culture as well
as other cultures. Acknowledging the need to acquire the world’s lingua
franca, Koreans study English beginning in primary school and continue
through high school where additional foreign language classes are offered. A
Korea 2030 Commission has even been set up to examine how to make
lifelong learning an integral aspect of Korea’s continuing dynamism.

No doubt Korea will continue to leverage on the strengths of its

education sector to continually fuel economic growth. However, as the world
becomes more interconnected and a global society emerges, it is not enough
that its graduates are able to compete among themselves in a Korean
setting. The industrial and technological juggernaut that fueled phenomenal
growth from the 1970’s to the 1990’s is now slowly giving way to a
knowledge-based economy anchored, not on being merely highly-
educated employees and factory workers, but extremely creative and
innovative members of the 21st century workforce, able to compete with their
peers from other fast-growing economies throughout the world.

1
South Korean Education Reforms. http://asiasociety.org/education-learning/learning-world/south-korean-
education-reforms. December 6, 2010.