The Political Economy of Education and Skills in South Korea: Democratisation, Liberalisation and Education Reform in Comparative Perspective

Timo Fleckenstein; Soohyun Christine Lee

doi:10.1080/09512748.2018.1443155

The Political Economy of Education and Skills in South Korea: Democratisation, Liberalisation and Education Reform in Comparative Perspective

Timo Fleckenstein, Soohyun Christine Lee

European & International Studies

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

16 Citations (Scopus)

294 Downloads (Pure)

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 mobili-ty. However, the Korean success story has started to show ‘cracks’ – with labour market dualisation, rising inequality and ‘over-education’. Whilst 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 underpin-nings of the developmental state and its education and skills formation system for un-derstanding how Korea’s economic and education miracle turned into ‘education infla-tion’, skills mismatch and social polarisation.

Original language	Undefined/Unknown
Journal	PACIFIC REVIEW
Early online date	19 Mar 2018
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1080/09512748.2018.1443155
Publication status	E-pub ahead of print - 19 Mar 2018

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10.1080/09512748.2018.1443155

The Political Economy of_FLECKENSTEIN_Publishedonline19March2018_GREEN AAMAccepted author manuscript, 328 KB

Cite this

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title = "The Political Economy of Education and Skills in South Korea: Democratisation, Liberalisation and Education Reform in Comparative Perspective",

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{\textquoteright}s rapid industrialisation, which allowed for high employment rates, relatively modest social inequality and remarkable social mobili-ty. However, the Korean success story has started to show {\textquoteleft}cracks{\textquoteright} – with labour market dualisation, rising inequality and {\textquoteleft}over-education{\textquoteright}. Whilst 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 underpin-nings of the developmental state and its education and skills formation system for un-derstanding how Korea{\textquoteright}s economic and education miracle turned into {\textquoteleft}education infla-tion{\textquoteright}, skills mismatch and social polarisation.",

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