Education in the Asia-Pacifi c Region: Issues, Concerns and Prospects 23 Hyunjoon Park Kyung-keun Kim Editors Korean Education in Changing Economic and Demographic Contexts Korean Education in Changing Economic and Demographic Contexts E DUCATION IN THE ASIA-PACIFIC REGION: ISSUES, CONCERNS AND PROSPECTS Volume 23 Series Editors-in-Chief: Professor Rupert Maclean, The Hong Kong Institute of Education, China Ryo Watanabe, National Institute for Educational Policy Research (NIER) of Japan, Tokyo Dr Lorraine Pe Symaco, Centre for Research in International and Comparative Education (CRICE), University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Editorial Board Professor Bob Adamson, The Hong Kong Institute of Education, China Dr Robyn Baker, New Zealand Council for Educational Research, Wellington, New Zealand Professor Michael Crossley, University of Bristol, United Kingdom Ms Shanti Jagannathan, Asian Development Bank, Manila, Philippines Dr Yuto Kitamura, University of Tokyo, Japan Professor Colin Power, Graduate School of Education, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia Professor Konai Helu Thaman, University of the South Pacific, Suva, Fiji Advisory Board Professor Mark Bray, UNESCO Chair, Comparative Education Research Centre, The University of Hong Kong, China; Professor Yin Cheong Cheng, The Hong Kong Institute of Education, China; Professor John Fien, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia; Dr Pham Lan Huong, International Educational Research Centre, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam; Dr Chong-Jae Lee, Korean Educational Development Institute (KEDI), Seoul, Republic of Korea; Ms Naing Yee Mar, GIZ, Yangon, Myanmar; Professor Geoff Masters, Australian Council for Educational Research, Melbourne, Australia; Dr Max Walsh, Secondary Education Project, Manila, Philippines; Dr Uchita de Zoysa, Global Sustainability Solutions (GLOSS), Colombo, Sri Lanka For further volumes: http://www.springer.com/series/5888 Hyunjoon Park (cid:129) Kyung-keun Kim Editors Korean Education in Changing Economic and Demographic Contexts Editors Hyunjoon Park Kyung-keun Kim Department of Sociology Department of Education University of Pennsylvania Korea University Philadelphia , PA , USA Seoul , Republic of Korea ISBN 978-981-4451-26-0 ISBN 978-981-4451-27-7 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-981-4451-27-7 Springer Singapore Heidelberg New York Dordrecht London Library of Congress Control Number: 2013953901 © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifi cally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfi lms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. Exempted from this legal reservation are brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis or material supplied specifi cally for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. Duplication of this publication or parts thereof is permitted only under the provisions of the Copyright Law of the Publisher’s location, in its current version, and permission for use must always be obtained from Springer. Permissions for use may be obtained through RightsLink at the Copyright Clearance Center. Violations are liable to prosecution under the respective Copyright Law. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifi c statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. While the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication, neither the authors nor the editors nor the publisher can accept any legal responsibility for any errors or omissions that may be made. The publisher makes no warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com) Series Editors Introduction Republic of Korea is a high-income developed country, being one of the G-20 major economies and a member of the OECD. It is one of the Asian Tigers and for several decades has had one of the world’s fastest growing economies. A frequently asked question concerns how Korea has achieved such truly mirac- ulous economic growth and development over the past 50 years, moving from being an impoverished, largely agricultural country to one which is highly industrialised, with an expanding service sector, and which has become one of the richest and most developed countries in the world. A country’s economy does not exist in isolation to other aspects of the society in question, such as the characteristics of the society, its political organisation and education system. Education and schooling systems do not exist in isolation to the society in which they are located, but refl ect the needs, and seek to serve the needs, of a particular society, at a particular time. Korea has a very effective education system, if academic results are used as the criteria for making such a judgement. For example, Korea is towards the top achiev- ers with regard to the high PISA results achieved and performs very well in various other international competitions which seek to measure academic achievement. One of the matters which this book examines is how Korea has promoted, imple- mented and achieved best and innovative practices as they have successfully sought to strengthen and upgrade their education system. Educational change in Korea is also of great interest to other countries in the region, as they examine and learn from the Korean experience regarding, for example, how stumbling blocks have (or have not) been overcome in education for development . The contents of this important and insightful book focus on the current contours of Korean education, educational reforms in a changing economy and the educa- tional challenges created by demographic changes. As the authors of this volume point out, Korean education is at a critical point of transition, chapters in the book examining possible pathways Korean education may take as it moves in directions that take it away from the traditional model. Many countries in Asia and beyond are interested in learning more about ‘the Korean Experience’, and how such major progress has been achieved over such a v vi Series Editors Introduction relatively short period of time. The book is particularly important and valuable in helping explain, in English, the success of the Korean education system, since many surveys of Korean education are only available in the Korean language. As the authors point out, this volume should appeal to a wide range of readers who are interested in the impact of economic and demographic change on education and schooling. The lessons learnt from the Korean experience are not just relevant for Korea, but also for other countries in the region (and beyond) as they seek to achieve educational innovation for development. Like several other countries in Asia, Korea has experienced unprecedented growth and change over the past several decades which have important implications for the organisation and content of edu- cation and schooling. Examples of such change, which are examined in this book, include the move to a more multicultural society, partly due to there being an increasing number of foreign migrants including more international marriages with foreign spouses; more single-parent families; and the changing role of adolescents in society, all of which have important implications for the education of children, youth and adults in Korea. There has also been a decline in fertility rates, while at the same time a greater proportion of the population is living longer than ever before. Rupert Maclean, Hong Kong Institute of Education, China Ryo Watanabe, National Institute for Educational Policy Research of Japan (NIER), Tokyo Lorraine Pe Symaco, Centre for Research in International and Comparative Education (CRICE), University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia July 2013 Pref ace As will often be heard in various chapters of this volume, Republic of Korea (here- after Korea) has now become a world leader in the proportion of young people with college education, coming from being an impoverished nation that had only a hand- ful of its population with a college education just a few decades ago. Further, the world has been impressed by the record of Korean students in international compe- titions of academic achievement. Regardless of whether or not we agree with the way in which the Korean educational system has educated its children, this remark- able achievement, along with the problems it has also generated, can be of interest to both researchers and the general public outside of Korea in attempting to under- stand their own educational systems from a comparative perspective. One of the editors of this collection has been teaching Korean education (and other issues) at a university in the United States and was often frustrated to know that there are not many surveys of Korean education available in English either for class study or for the general public. In particular, he was looking for a survey that can offer up-to-date and comprehensive reviews of Korean education with particu- lar consideration of recent changes in economic and demographic environments and their effects on Korean education. The opportunity of collaboration with the other editor, who has been teaching Korean education for more than 15 years in a univer- sity in Korea and has published numerous articles and several single-authored or coauthored books on Korean education, led both editors to realize the potential of an edited book that can cover the diverse issues Korean education is currently facing and also introduce the various efforts of Korean educators and policymakers toward dealing with those challenges. For this purpose, several scholars whose expertise in a specifi c fi eld of educa- tional research is well known met together in a small conference hosted by the fi rst editor in August 2009 at the University of Pennsylvania, with fi nancial support from the Center for Korean Studies at the University. Soo-yong Byun (Chap. 3 , also coau- thor of Chap. 2 ), Shin Arita (Chap. 5 ), and Min-Kyung Lee (Chap. 1 0 ) attended the conference along with the editors, Kyung-keun Kim (coauthor of Chap. 2 ) and Hyunjoon Park (Chap. 9 ). At the conference, the authors presented their drafts and received useful comments from discussants who were not Korean education vii viii Preface specialists but were fi rst-rate scholars of US, Chinese, and Latin American education (Grace Kao, Emily Hannum, and Jere Behrman, all at the University of Pennsylvania). In other words, the authors benefi ted from the discussants’ comparative perspective to put the Korean education in context. After the conference, each author incorporated the comments and suggestions of the discussants as well as those of other scholars and students who attended the conference. In making their revisions, the authors particularly highlighted the broad relevance of the Korean case for the emerging issue of economic and demographic globalization and education. After the conference, the editors decided to extend an invitation to fi ve other scholars to join the project. All based in Korea, these scholars, some senior and some junior, have produced important work on topics of Korean education that have eventually been grouped into three broad themes in this volume. Each chapter by these authors, Jae-Hee Ahn (Chap. 4 ), Hyunsook Yu (Chap. 6 ), Yeo-Jung Hwang (Chap. 8 ), Kihun Kim (Chap. 7 ), and Yoon Young Kim (Chap. 11 ), went through rounds of revision with comments and suggestions from both editors. Although these authors did not participate in the original conference, the editors emphasized the same framework of approaching Korean education through comparative lenses and standards of quality for these additional chapters in the review process. With the addition of these fi ve chapters that cover diverse and timely issues of Korean education, the timeliness and breadth of the volume has been further enhanced. This collection therefore features a total of ten chapters on Korean education that are divided into three sections. The four chapters in the fi rst section, “Current Contours of Korean Education,” address the current situation in Korean education, focusing on two indicators: academic performance and educational attainment. The following section of the volume, “Educational Reforms in a Changing Economy,” introduces growing concerns as to whether the traditional Korean model can adequately meet the educational demands of the emerging knowledge-based economy and suggests educational reform measures that aim to modify the educa- tional system in line with these demands. Then, the third section of the volume, “Demographic Changes and Educational Challenges,” presents three chapters that address different aspects of recent demographic changes and their implications for Korean education. In addition to the three thematic sections, editors have included an introductory chapter at the beginning of the volume as a preview of issues and contexts of Korean education dealt with across the ten chapters.1 Although the studies included in this volume mainly deal with the Korean case, they should appeal to a wide range of readers who are generally interested in issues of recent economic and demographic changes and their implications for education. Indeed, Korea is not the only country in the world that has been experiencing growing economic inequality and rising immigration in recent years. In particular, its neighboring countries including Japan and Taiwan are going through similar 1 For editing the volume and writing the introductory chapter, Hyunjoon Park (the fi rst editor) acknowledges support from the Academy of Korean Studies Grant funded by the Korean Government (MEST) (AKS-2010-DZZ-2101). Preface ix economic and demographic changes, albeit in different degrees. For instance, East Asian countries have long had very minimal infl ows of foreign populations and have maintained cultural homogeneity. Since the mid- to late 1990s, however, international marriages in Taiwan and Japan as well as in Korea have steadily increased, although the trend seems to be leveling off or declining since its peak in the mid-2 000s (Jones 2012; Bélanger 2010). In particular, in Taiwan international marriages accounted for 32 % of all marriages in 2003 (Jones 2012). Not only foreign spouses but also unskilled labor workers from China and South East Asian countries have increasingly entered Japan, Korea, and Taiwan to fi ll labor shortages in manu- facturing and other primary industries caused by the declining fertility and changing economic structure in the three East Asian countries (Kaneko 2009; Bélanger 2010). Therefore, challenges to Korean education caused by such changes in economy and demography, and efforts with which Korean education deals with those challenges, will provide an interesting case study for other East Asian countries that are currently facing similar challenges associated with economic and demographic changes. Hyunjoon Park and Kyung-keun Kim References Bélanger, D. (2010). Marriages with foreign women in East Asia: Bride traffi cking or voluntary migration? Population and Societies , 469 , 1–4. Jones, G. W. (2012). I nternational marriage in Asia: What do we know and what do we need to know? ARI working paper no. 174. Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore. Kaneko, K. (2009). Foreign migrants in Taiwan and Japan: A comparative analysis. Asia Journal of Global Studies , 3 , 22–36.