Article Gold Open Access 2019

The political economy of education and skills in South Korea: democratisation, liberalisation and education reform in comparative perspective

FT
Fleckenstein, Timo
 LS
Lee, Soohyun Christine
Pacific Review
Journal · Vol. 32 · Issue 2 · pp. 168-187
Abstract

The success story of Korean economic development is intimately linked with the so-called developmental state; and education policy, as part of centrally orchestrated industrial policy, played a critical role in the country's rapid industrialisation, which allowed for high employment rates, relatively modest social inequality and remarkable social mobility. However, the Korean success story has started to show ‘cracks’ – with labour market dualisation, rising inequality and ‘over-education’. While acknowledging the importance of the East Asian financial crisis as external shock for the Korean political economy, we suggest more fundamental problems in the socio-economic and socio-political underpinnings of the developmental state and its education and skills formation system for understanding how Korea's economic and education miracle turned into ‘education inflation’, skills mismatch and social polarisation. © 2018, © 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Keywords

Author Keywords

South Korea industrialisation Skills formation Private education Democratisation

Index Keywords

education reform comparative study labor market developing world socioeconomic conditions South Korea Political economy liberalization democratization
Author Affiliations
Department of Social Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, United Kingdom
King's College London, London, United Kingdom
Funding & Acknowledgements
British Academy
The authors would like to acknowledge generous support from the British Academy and Korea Foundation, which facilitated the research of this article.
Korea Foundation, KF
The authors would like to acknowledge generous support from the British Academy and Korea Foundation, which facilitated the research of this article.
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