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To be published in Goodman, R., Kariya, T. and Taylor, J. (eds). The Changing Relationship between the State and Higher
Education in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea and the UK, Oxford Studies in Comparative Education Series,
Symposium Books (forthcoming).
1
The (un)changing Relationship between the State and Higher Education in
South Korea: some surprising continuities amid transition
Terri Kim
Brunel University
Introduction
This chapter offers a critical review of the (un)changing relationship between the State and
Higher Education in South Korea (which will be termed Korea, hereafter) in the last twenty
years or so, especially since the 1997-8 Asian economic crisis. State-University relations are,
in general, subject to, and conditioned by, the public funding regime. At the time of writing
this chapter, substantial budget cuts in higher education in England have stimulated the
debate about what a university is for, the issues around higher education as a public good,
public/private dichotomies and questions about how should society pay for universities.
Such general discussion about university futures in England, especially in relation to funding,
is often confined to the Anglo-American cases drawing on neoliberal market principles to
justify higher education funding cuts, as if there is no alternative, echoing neoliberal
Thatcherism. On the other hand, public expenditure on higher education in some other
countries (e.g. Germany, France, China, Taiwan, Brazil and Korea) has continued to grow
amid the continuing global recession (San Francisco Chronicle, 27 February 2010).
However, broadly speaking, it is more likely that many of the European universities will
follow the Anglo-American corporatist entrepreneurial model to reform university
governance, management and finance in the mid-term future. In the past few years, Denmark,
Sweden and the Netherlands already started to charge full cost fees for international students
from outside of the EU, and there is increasing pressure on national tuition fees as well. A
Dutch expert in the internationalisation of higher education, with whom the author has
conducted interviews in 2011, reports that Dutch universities started to ponder why Dutch tax
payers support university education of non-Dutch European students whose number is
increasing at high speed. For instance, the number of English students enrolled in Maastricht
University in autumn 2011 is estimated at 400, which is ten times more within a year since
the announcement of higher tuition fees to be charged up to £9,000 (Independent, 23 June
To be published in Goodman, R., Kariya, T. and Taylor, J. (eds). The Changing Relationship between the State and Higher
Education in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea and the UK, Oxford Studies in Comparative Education Series,
Symposium Books (forthcoming).
2
2011). Overall, there has been 54 per cent increase of foreign students in Dutch higher
education over the past four years (University World News 23 October 2011).
Such a dramatic increase in the number of students moving to other countries for higher
education degrees within Europe may be highly welcomed by the EU policy makers as a step
forward towards the goal of Europe 2020: “At least 20 per cent of those graduating in the
European Higher Education Area should have had a study or training period abroad by 2020.”
(Communiqué of the Conference of European Ministers Responsible for Higher Education in
Leuven, 28-29 April 2009, „The Bologna Process 2020’, p. 4).
However, academic mobility and popular choice for higher education within Europe seem to
be more concentrated and limited in just a few countries. Accordingly, small countries like
the Netherlands and Belgium which are increasingly popular for academic-degree mobility
have a new dilemma: whether to sustain the European tradition of public funding for higher
education or not. Or more specifically, there is a growing pressure in these countries either to
stem the unlimited inflow of students from within the EU by introducing quotas, or to charge
higher fees for them in the near future (University World News, 18 September 2011; 23
October 2011).
The question about higher education funding issues especially entwined with transnational
academic mobility in Europe then leads to some more prolonged and fundamental questions:
i.e. what is „public‟ in higher education?; and what is the purpose and use of higher education
in the public sphere?
If we think about these themes in different spaces and times – e.g. Europe in 1500, Japan in
1900, Germany in 1933, and England in 2011, and also think through the implications for the
future, it becomes clear that the public/private division in higher education does not exactly
overlap with the relationship between the State and higher education. Taking a long view
across space and time certainly helps to understand the role of higher education beyond
national territorial boundaries and national economies.
It is against this background that this chapter considers the case of Korea since the 1997-8
Asia economic crisis, through which the Korean reform strategies fully endorsed neoliberal
market principles conforming to the IMF Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) (Crotty
and Lee, 2001). It is argued that despite the restructuring process and the efforts to transform
Korean economy from a strong government-regulated, chaebol
1
-monopoly system into a
1
Chaebol in Korea is the large conglomerates as equivalent to Zaibatsu in Japan.
To be published in Goodman, R., Kariya, T. and Taylor, J. (eds). The Changing Relationship between the State and Higher
Education in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea and the UK, Oxford Studies in Comparative Education Series,
Symposium Books (forthcoming).
3
neoliberal market-driven “globalised” system, there has been no fundamental change in the
relationship between the State and higher education in Korea.
The chapter offers a critical analysis of (i) the strong government‟s regulations and
interventions in the higher education sector that has continued regardless of funding patterns
in Korea, and (ii) its unique combination with the chaebol‟s dominance in university
governance and management, which has intensified amid (iii) the process of neoliberal
restructuring and global marketisation. It will suggest that there is an urgent need for the
future of higher education development in Korea to arrest (iv) further commodification of
knowledge and displacement of higher education. The following section will depict the long-
standing characteristics of the triadic relationship between the State, the University and the
chaebol.
The idiosyncrasies of the Korean version of Development and the State-Higher
Education relationship
Korea has achieved, at speed, a high level of economic growth. It has risen from the rubble of
the Korean War into the ranks of the OECD and G20. In 2009, South Korea joined the 24th
member nation in the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of OECD. It is the first
time since the establishment of OECD in 1961 that a former aid beneficiary country became a
donor (OECD, 27 November 2009).
Korea has been one of the world's fastest growing economies since the early 1960s, except
during the period of economic crisis in the late 1990s. It is still one of the fastest growing
developed countries, along with Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan. The Korean economy
has been driven by manufactured goods (such as IT electronics, cars, ships, steel and textiles)
oriented towards exports, which account for 50 per cent of GDP. Korea is the 8th largest
exporter and 11th largest importer in the world - ahead of the UK, Canada and Russia, ranked
among the 15 largest economies in the world
2
, and classified as an advanced economy (CIA,
2011; World Bank, 2010).
As a resource-scarce nation, Korea has relied mainly on international trade for economic
growth. It has been aggressively seeking free trade agreements with foreign countries to
expand the country's “economic territory”: starting the FTA with Chile in 2004, followed by
2
The size of the Korean economy is 14th in the world by nominal GDP and 12th by purchasing power parity
(PPP) (CIA, 2011).
To be published in Goodman, R., Kariya, T. and Taylor, J. (eds). The Changing Relationship between the State and Higher
Education in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea and the UK, Oxford Studies in Comparative Education Series,
Symposium Books (forthcoming).
4
Peru, India, ASEAN, the Korea-EU FTA went into effect in July 2011. Given the upcoming
sealing of the Korea-USA FTA, which was ratified by the US Congress on 12 October 2011
after more than four years‟ negotiations, and is now pending for ratification by the Korean
National Assembly, President Lee Myung-bak has recently proclaimed during his visit to the
United States for summit that the Korea-US FTA will expand Korea‟ economic territory to
become the third largest in the world, covering 61 per cent of the world GDP through FTAs,
next to Chile and Mexico (Chosun Ilbo, 14 October 2011:
http://biz.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2011/10/14/2011101400207.html).
The current export-oriented economic profile in Korea can be attributed to the strong
relationship between the State and the chaebol formed in the initial stage of economic
development in the 1960s and 70s, when big firms worked as an engine for fast economic
growth. With exclusive government support and protection, big firms grew to be the chaebol
(Lim & Jang, 2006; Shin & Chang, 2003). The government gave the right to engage in
certain businesses exclusively to the chaebol. The government continuously employed an
expansion policy favouring the chaebol through financial assistance, low interest rates, tax
benefits, foreign exchange allocations, import and export licenses and foreign investment
incentives. The Korean chaebol is often compared with the Japanese zaibatsu, but there are
major differences between them. Chaebols are still largely controlled by the founding
families and centralised in ownership to form subsidiaries which are often run by family
members, whereas zaibatsus are controlled by groups of professional managers and more
decentralised to employ outside contractors (The Economist, 11 December 1997).
As a nation which is “used to seeing itself as an underdog, overshadowed by neighbouring
China and Japan and all-but ignored by the rest of the world” (Financial Times, 25 February
2010), the Korean government and its people are keen to compete for higher international
ranking
3
and recognition.
Although Korea‟s general world image is still strongly associated with the geopolitics
entwined with North Korea‟s alleged nuclear weapons rather than with its technologies and
economic development and the new K-pop cultural industry, the country has become quite
3
According to the IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook 2010, Korea gained positive scores more recently: in
the ranking of 58 industrialised nations, it came in the 1st in patent productivity, 3rd in employee training, 4th in
scientific infrastructures, 5th in R&D spending in proportion to GDP, 8th in GDP growth per capita, 13th in fiscal
policy and 2nd in higher education achievement, which charts the percentage of population with higher degrees.
In contrast, South Korea‟s lowest rankings came in labour relations (56th), openness to foreign ideas (52nd),
preparation for an aging society (54th), and the extent to which university education boosts economic
competitiveness (46th) (Source: Institute of Management Development; re-quoted from JoongAng Daily, 20
May 2010).
To be published in Goodman, R., Kariya, T. and Taylor, J. (eds). The Changing Relationship between the State and Higher
Education in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea and the UK, Oxford Studies in Comparative Education Series,
Symposium Books (forthcoming).
5
visible in some of the international indices. For instance, it ranks quite high on the world
R&D index (6th), which measures research & development expenditures; human-capital index
(10th), which measures the percentage of people with college degrees, the scientific-talent
index (13th), which examines the number of researchers per capita. Above all, its gross
enrolment rate in higher education is the world highest at 96 per cent (OECD, 2009;
McKinsey & Company, Inc. 2010).
The Korean version of economic development and the relationship between the State and
(higher) education is often identified with the common characteristics of East Asian
„Confucian Capitalism‟ (Yoshihara, 1977; 1994; Vogel, 1979; Yao, 2002) and the
„Developmental State‟ (Johnson, 1999; Thompson, 1996; Woo-Cummings, 1999), which
include strong government, tight bureaucratic structure, hierarchical order of social relations,
a high level of educational aspiration and attainment, and networked social structure,
emphasis on diligence, thrift, cooperation, and loyalty to one‟s group/organisation, etc. (Kim,
2009: 863). Yoshihara Kunio, a well-known Japanese Development economist, argued that
the best way to hasten economic development is through strong government or a
developmental state which „educates‟ the people and initiates a dynamic private sector
(Yoshihara, 1977, 1994, pp. 196–197, 202; Berger, 1997, p. 269).
With the conceptual apparatus of Confucian capitalism and the Developmental State, the next
section reviews the State and higher education relationship in Korea.
Expansion, costs and values of higher education in Korea
One of the major characteristics of Korean higher education has been the strong and
dominant private sector. The majority (about 85 per cent) of higher education institutions in
Korea are private: 145 out of a total 171 four-year universities and 143 out of a total 158 two-
to three-year junior colleges are private. About 78 per cent of university students and 96 per
cent of professional school students enrol in private institutions (KEDI, 2010).
As indicated earlier, however, the government has kept direct regulatory control over the
higher education system on the whole - regardless of funding patterns. The World Bank
Report in 2000 indicates:
…the government‟s control over the entire operation of the education system has
rendered the system highly centralized and inflexible to market needs. The most
illustrative example of over-regulation comes from the tertiary education sector. Both
To be published in Goodman, R., Kariya, T. and Taylor, J. (eds). The Changing Relationship between the State and Higher
Education in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea and the UK, Oxford Studies in Comparative Education Series,
Symposium Books (forthcoming).
6
the private and public universities lack autonomy in their management and academic
affairs, with government regulations (World Bank, 2000, p. 44).
As mentioned earlier, there has been strong relationship between the government and the
chaebol in the process of economic development.
4
The government has sponsored the
chaebol in the expansion of the private sector. Accordingly, the chaebol - such as Samsung,
Hyundai and LG - has dominated almost all socio-economic areas to affect everyday life
experiences in South Korea.
In the field of education, however, the government has maintained centralised regulations
over all educational institutions (both public and private), regardless of funding patterns, to
make education serve the state‟s pragmatically utilitarian, technically functional uses of
(higher) education (Kim, 2008a; 2009; 2011).
Public spending on higher education in Korea, as a proportion of the total, is below the
OECD average of 69 per cent, leaving most of the tuition burden on students and parents, and
yet Korea has the second highest university tuition fees among advanced industrialised
countries of the OECD, behind only the USA. The nation's average fee is US$8,519 (£5,203)
at private institutions - which account for over 80 per cent of provision - and $4,717 at public
universities, according to OECD figures adjusted for purchasing-power parity (THE, 16 June
2011).
In 2011 university students have been turning out to protest over having to fork out over
$8,000 a year in tuition fees, hoping that they can force President Lee Myung-bak to keep his
2007 election campaign promise to halve tuition fees. The most grating issue for many
students is not the tuition fee alone, but the poor quality of the education being provided. The
lack of investment is highlighted by a range of statistics, including the professor-student ratio,
which is currently 32.7 students per professor in South Korea – more than twice the OECD
average of 15.8. Korean universities invest relatively small sums in students, spending $8,920
on each student, compared with the OECD average of $12,907, half the spending per student
of universities in the US ($27,010) and little more than half of those in Australia ($14,726)
and Japan ($14,201) (MOE, 2011; Re-cited from University World News, 23 June 2011; THE,
16 June 2011).
4
Especially during the 1960s through 80s, a lack of transparency and accountability in the links between them
had permitted corruption in capital accumulation by the chaebol through privileged loans, or taxes, labour
control, and protection from outside competition; in turn, business leaders had provided the political funds to
prolong military governments (Cotton, 1995: 83-94).
To be published in Goodman, R., Kariya, T. and Taylor, J. (eds). The Changing Relationship between the State and Higher
Education in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea and the UK, Oxford Studies in Comparative Education Series,
Symposium Books (forthcoming).
7
The rapid expansion of higher education has increased concerns about the quality of
university graduates and the value of higher education being expressed by different
stakeholders, especially business leaders and students and parents. For example, according to
the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry, a majority of graduates thought their college
education was little use in their office work. Just one in 10 respondents said college education
reflected the needs of businesses (University World News, 23 June 2011).
With the huge expansion in numbers of graduates, unemployment has also soared. The
employment rate of university graduates in 2009 was just about 55 per cent, which means
currently over one million university graduates are unemployed in Korea. (Money Today, 2
February 2009:
http://stock.mt.co.kr/view/mtview.php?no=2009020209143186144&type=1&outlink=2&EV
EC). The unemployment rate of university graduates is officially around 10-20 per cent even
at the best universities. However, inside experts suggest that it is even higher, possibly as
much as 50 per cent (University World News, 23 June 2011). Meanwhile, the government has
announced that the overall unemployment rate is lowest now in more than ten years at 3.2 per
cent as of 2010, which is attributed to government programmes to create public sector jobs.
In reality, however, many of the public sector jobs available for new graduates are short-term
internships which often do not lead to a permanent contract position (Trading Economics,
2010).
Higher Education and labour market
Contemporaneously, the Korean labour market relies on a high proportion of short-term
contract-based irregular workers. Among the under-30-year old age cohort, the proportion of
irregular employment is 52.1 per cent as of March 2010, exceeding that of regular
employment (47.9 per cent). Further, the average salary of temporary contract-based
employees with no job security is 46.2 per cent of that of full-time regular employees, which
indicates a widening income discrepancy between the two groups (Hankook Ilbo, 11 July
2010: http://news.hankooki.com/lpage/economy/201007/h2010071122332321540.htm#).
The higher education sector is no exception: part-time, contract-based academics now
outnumber the tenure-track academics in universities in Korea (Hankyoreh Shinmun, 10
September 2009). The total number of irregular fixed-term university academics in Korea is
estimated at 135,000 and the number of tenured or tenure-track academics is 55,000. Almost
half of all subjects in Korean universities are reportedly being taught by those part-time,
To be published in Goodman, R., Kariya, T. and Taylor, J. (eds). The Changing Relationship between the State and Higher
Education in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea and the UK, Oxford Studies in Comparative Education Series,
Symposium Books (forthcoming).
8
fixed-term lecturers who do not have job security, and yet whose average salary is just about
5-10 per cent of their tenure-track counterparts. The fixed-term lecturers are literally casual
labour in Korean universities nowadays. They can be easily dismissed anytime. In 2009 alone,
1,219 lecturers out of 10,000 were reportedly laid off without advance notice. Facing
hardship and humiliation in this situation after obtaining doctorates, seven lecturers have
committed suicide since 1998. Concomitantly, some of the lecturers in irregular employment
in Korea continued a sit-in protest in front of the Parliament and several other major sites for
960 days, requesting the revision of the Higher Education Act and the restoration of the legal
status of university teachers (lecturers) (Status of teacher for irregular professors in Korea, 5
June 2010).
Nevertheless, the debate around irregular employment in Korean universities has not included
the similar disadvantages and discrimination that foreign academics experience when they are
employed in Korean universities. The overall public discourse - let alone the legal terms and
conditions of irregular employment contract - are focusing on only „Korean‟ nationals in
general, even though there is an increasing number of foreigners living and working in the
society. Overall, it has been taken for granted in Korea that foreign academic staff are not
employed on the same legal terms as the local staff. The international academic staffing
issues in Korean universities are a serious problem for official internationalisation policies
and practices in Korea. They will be discussed later in line with internationalisation policy
and practice.
Overall, changes in employment relations in Korea - e.g. the end of lifetime employment,
voluntary and compulsory redundancies, and the routinisation of irregular, short-term,
contract-based employment, performance-based payment scheme, etc. - followed the Asian
economic crisis (1997-8) as part of the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) which was a
condition of the IMF bailout.
The surface impression of these changes was that Korea is following the „Anglo-American‟
model of neoliberal policies and practices worldwide - as King (2010) argued with the
concept of „policy internationalisation‟ (Thatcher, 2007). For instance, in the UK, the
casualisation of academic labour has been noticeable earlier, since academic tenure was
abolished in the late 1980s. Throughout the 1990s, the position of academic staff in the UK
became progressively less secure. In many research intensive universities in the UK, the
proportion of academic staff on full-time permanent contracts is just around 30 per cent (Kim,
2010). Subsequently, the UCU (University and College Union) in the UK set up an Anti-
casualisation Committee in June 2007 (UCU, 2007). In the United States, the proportion of
tenured, or tenure-track faculty members also plummeted from 57 per cent in 1975 to 31per
To be published in Goodman, R., Kariya, T. and Taylor, J. (eds). The Changing Relationship between the State and Higher
Education in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea and the UK, Oxford Studies in Comparative Education Series,
Symposium Books (forthcoming).
9
cent in 2007 and has continued to drop below one-third in 2009 (The Chronicle of Higher
Education, 4 July 2010). In other words, the so-called adjuncts - both part-timers and full-
timers not on a tenure track - account for nearly 70 per cent of professors at colleges and
universities, both public and private in the United States. The situation in Latin America is
even worse, as the tradition of part-time university academics (loosely known as „taxi-
professors‟) exists and continues. In almost all Latin American countries except for Brazil, up
to 80 per cent of the professoriate is employed part-time (University World News 29 March
2009).
Overall, given these contexts, the value of higher education and higher academic degrees for
„employability‟ has become further stratified and conditioned by status ranking and
competition in Korea. The education-based class system is notable in Korea where white-
collar-educated managers treat people without a college education, including skilled workers
with vocational or technical training as „second-class citizens‟.
However, the strong government‟s regulations over the whole education system have led to
limited educational choices in Korea. Accordingly, given the strong dissatisfaction about
university education in South Korea
5
, the number of Korean student studying abroad has
continued to increase, and the pattern of educational migration has become more diversified,
ranging from primary schooling to university undergraduate and postgraduate studies, and
includes both short-term or frequent study visits and long-term educational migration.
Academic mobility and educational migration: Sociology of status and positional goods in
higher education
The Korean pattern of educational migration can also be linked to another very distinctive
feature of higher education, which is the high proportion of foreign, especially US-educated
Korean academics as faculty members in major universities. On the whole, there is
considerable evidence that the Korean academic profession is already internationalised in
5 A survey of Korean parents conducted by the East Asia Institute in 2007 reports that three out of four
respondents described themselves as “unsatisfied” or “very unsatisfied” with the nation‟s public-education
system. One result is the existence of tens of thousands of private-sector hagwon (cram schools); more than 80%
of adolescents attend one of these cram schools. There, they are drilled on how to excel on the multiple-choice
national college entrance exams, which govern admittance to the nation‟s top universities. Success on the
CSAT, as it is known, means admittance to the top universities that make up the “SKY” elite: i.e. enrolment in
Seoul National, Korea, and Yonsei universities (JoongAng Ilbo, 18 May 2010:
http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2920568).
To be published in Goodman, R., Kariya, T. and Taylor, J. (eds). The Changing Relationship between the State and Higher
Education in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea and the UK, Oxford Studies in Comparative Education Series,
Symposium Books (forthcoming).
10
terms of the overseas academic experience of its members. For instance, over 90 % of the
academic staff in the POSTECH – a top private institution specialising in science and
technology owned by POSCO/Pohang Iron and Steel Co. - took PhDs in the USA. In the so-
called “SKY” (Seoul National, Korea and Yonsei), the top three universities in South Korea,
the proportion of foreign doctoral degree holders among the academics in Humanities and
Social Sciences Faculties is 77 per cent (SNU), 80.3 per cent (KU), and 81.7 per cent (YU) as
of July 2010 (University News Network, 13 July 2010:
www.unn.net/news/detail.asp?nsCode=62787). According to governmental data released in
2010, the overall proportion of academics who gained foreign doctorates at SNU is 50.4 per
cent, which is 10 times more than that of Tokyo University (5.2 per cent). Furthermore, the
majority of those with foreign doctorates have studied in the USA (ibid).
However, it is not just the great majority of university academics in Korea who have studied
and gained degrees abroad. Many Korean students have experienced studying abroad for
primary and secondary schooling as well as tertiary education. As S. J. Chang (2008)
comments, it seems true that “no other country of similar stature shows such a severe
dependency on foreign education” (Chang, 2008: 4).
Nevertheless, the foreign academic degrees possessed by Korean university academics have
not necessarily meant the internationalisation of Korean universities and higher education in
general (Kim, 2005). The overall character of university academic culture has been
homogeneously „Korean‟ not least because professional/academic and personal relations in
Korea is based on highly exclusive alumni networking and academic inbreeding. Despite the
official emphasis, for more than a decade, on internationalising Korean higher education,
there is a strong local boundaries: the internal sociology of daily practice inside academe is
still very local in practice (Kim, 2011).
Public/private binary ambivalence in the State-University relations
The State regulatory relationship with higher education and its pattern of economic
development in Korea is often compared with the Japanese case. They share a number of
similarities, such as the close relationship between political and business circles, the rapid
expansion of higher education led by the private sector, and a strong social demand for
university education, which has made university entrance especially at the top end of the
scale extremely competitive - despite oversupply in the private higher education sector
(Goodman, Hatakenaka and Kim, 2009). Fierce competitions to enter the best universities
To be published in Goodman, R., Kariya, T. and Taylor, J. (eds). The Changing Relationship between the State and Higher
Education in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea and the UK, Oxford Studies in Comparative Education Series,
Symposium Books (forthcoming).
11
have never been loosened up in Korea, despite the universalisation of its higher education,
and the shrinking student population, and regardless of the changes in government‟s
regulations over admission criteria: just about 1.8% of high-school graduates (10,000 out of
550,000) win places in the country's top three universities (i.e. Seoul National, Yonsei and
Korea Universities) each year (The Chronicle of Higher Education, 19 June 2009).
As suggested by Yonezawa and Kim in the OECD Higher Education 2030 (2008), given the
steep hierarchical order within the pyramid-shaped higher education systems in both Japan
and Korea, elite institutions at the top would strive to become more competitive and selective
than before, whereas those non-elite, local private institutions of higher education would go
through either merging or closing down the business under the impact of demographic
change and the pressure from more severe and open market competitions (Yonezawa and
Kim, 2008).
However, unlike Japan (or China or most European countries), the status of private higher
education institutions in Korea is not necessarily lower than public institutions. The Korean
University League Table in 2009, for instance, shows the dominance of Private HEIs in South
Korea: among the top ten, only two (KAIST and SNU) are national, and among the top 20,
there are just five national universities - including PNU (15th), KNU (16th), and CNU (19th)
(JoongAng Daily Newspaper, 23 September 2009:
http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2910430).
The excellence of private universities in South Korea is also attributed to their partnership
with the corporate sector, especially chaebol. Chaebols have not only donated development
funding to some of the major universities (both public and private) but also acquired some
private universities. For instance, Sung Kyun Kwan University is now run by Samsung, and
Chung-Ang University was purchased by the Doosan Group (the 13th largest conglomerate in
South Korea) in 2008 (JoongAng Daily, 19 January 2009:
http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2899999). The corporate sponsorship
was essential in realising the Sung Kyun Kwan University‟s vision 2020: e.g. Samsung
Digital School on campus provides specially designed elite education in the field of Nano
technology for the 200 students recruited annually, all of whom are under full scholarships
and given free accommodation. All courses are taught in English.
The recent Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2011-12 shows POSTECH
in Korea is ranked 53rd - far ahead of Seoul National (124th) or Korea National Institute of
Science and Technology (KAIST) (94th). POSTECH is only 25 year olds, founded by
POSCO steel company in South Korea. It claims that POSTECH is the first research-oriented
To be published in Goodman, R., Kariya, T. and Taylor, J. (eds). The Changing Relationship between the State and Higher
Education in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea and the UK, Oxford Studies in Comparative Education Series,
Symposium Books (forthcoming).
12
university in Korea. Although it is a private institution, only 6.6 per cent of its revenue is
from tuition fees (and 5.6 per cent from government subsidies), whereas 29.9 per cent of
revenue is from endowment and another 48.9 per cent from research, and 9.0 per cent from
other sources (http://www.postech.ac.kr/).
The unique triadic relationships between the State and the chaebol and higher education will
be discussed more in the next section in reviewing the ways in which the Korean government
responded to economic globalisation and led higher education reforms after the economic
crisis.
Neoliberal economic restructuring and higher education reforms after the economic
crisis 1997/8
The Korean model of development was first challenged when the country was hit by the
major economic crisis of November 1997. Given the conditions on which the International
Monetary Fund‟s (IMF) offered a rescue package of a record US$58 billion on 3 December
1997, South Korea was expected to go through the Structural Adjustment Programme
imposed by the IMF and the World Bank then. The government‟s restructuring programmes
included the chaebol, the financial and banking sector, the opening of the stock market, a
market-oriented macro-economic policy, privatisation, deregulation, trade liberalization,
flexibility of the labour market, and the reduction or elimination of government intervention
(Kim, 2000: 184-186). The restructuring programme was designed to construct transparent
corporate governance, prudent financial management, cooperative labour relations and
efficient government administration.
Kim Dae-jung, assuming the Presidency amid the economic crisis in 1998, proclaimed a new
state vision of the future: „A Second Nation-Building (Je Yi-ey Kuen Kook) to unite Korean
people in crisis. The patriotic slogan convinced the public of the necessity of socio-economic
restructuring process for the survival of the nation. As widely reported in newspapers, a
nation-wide campaign, called „Save the nation‟ was strongly supported by the public in South
Korea. During the campaign, people in Korea were selling or donating their rings and
jewellery or anything else that contained gold in their households. Despite the IMF bailout
condition, South Korea‟s economy even grew 10.7 per cent in 1999 and 8.8 per cent in 2000,
and South Korea eventually paid off all its debts, - a US$30.2 billion international aid
package, including US$19.5 billion from the IMF by August 2001 - two years and 10 months
To be published in Goodman, R., Kariya, T. and Taylor, J. (eds). The Changing Relationship between the State and Higher
Education in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea and the UK, Oxford Studies in Comparative Education Series,
Symposium Books (forthcoming).
13
ahead of schedule and has regained its economic sovereignty (Asian Economic News, 27
August 2001).
However, it was after paying off the IMF debts that neo-liberal market-principled economic
globalisation intensified further to restructure Korea‟s economic and social apparatus. The
draconian restructuring process to privatise core national industries has continued - as is the
case with the incumbent government‟s plan to sell off Incheon International Airport to
foreign capital (Hankyerae Shinmun, 2 August 2011:
http://www.hani.co.kr/arti/economy/economy_general/490010.html).
The ideologies of neo-liberalism and the policies linked to that, such as market-principled
public sector reforms and devolution – according to the model of new public management
(NPM) - eventually led to a real shift to higher education policies as well, and a series of
higher education reforms have been implemented. The following section will review and
discuss that in light of the new contractual relationship between the State and the University.
6
Higher Education – who owns and who owes accountability in Korea?
During the last twenty years or so, a number of higher education reforms in Korea have been
initiated by four governments, one after another: the first civilian centre-right conservative
government led by President Kim Young Sam (1992-97) followed by the two past liberal left-
wing governments led by President Kim Dae-jung (1998-2003) and his successor President
Roh Moo-hyun ; 2003-2008) and the incumbent conservative right-wing government led by
President Lee Myung-bak (2008 – present).
The first phase (1992-97):
It was during the Kim Young Sam government (1992-97) that the policy rhetoric of economic
globalisation started to be incorporated in higher education reforms. The government then put
great emphasis on Segyehwa (globalisation), which was based on popular views at that time
6
Given the fact that private higher education has been prominent in realising universal higher education, and the
continuing practice of traditional academic and bureaucratic power networks, the contractual relationship
between the State and the University have developed relatively late in Korea. In fact, the overall
professional/academic and personal relations in Korea have been, and are still, based on highly exclusive
academic networking and the prestige of an early Korean academic background of high status, which can be
further strengthened by foreign routes – mainly identified with American institutions (Kim, 2001, pp. 177-183).
To be published in Goodman, R., Kariya, T. and Taylor, J. (eds). The Changing Relationship between the State and Higher
Education in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea and the UK, Oxford Studies in Comparative Education Series,
Symposium Books (forthcoming).
14
such as the rise of a borderless transnational economy, the new information, communications
and technology (ICT), and lifelong learning (Kim, Young Sam, 1996: 7-16). National opinion
supported the political rhetoric about globalisation, even though there seemed to be lack of
awareness about how to achieve it. Nevertheless, President Kim Young Sam declared 1994 to
be a milestone in the pursuit of economic globalisation (Presidential television address on
New Year‟s Day).
The immediate interest was in how to make Korea a more visible and influential member of
international society. The government sought ways to improve the international image of
Korea and its level of international communication. One measure was to strengthen the work
of the Korea Foundation overseas. Another measure was to join OECD, as the second Asian
nation (after Japan), in 1996 (Kim, 2000: 182-3). The Kim Young Sam government then
already intended to reform the earlier model of a state-guided and protected economy
monopolised by the chaebol and to promote a free market economy. It started to implement
strong neo-liberal measures, incorporating itself fully into the globalisation process.
The Kim Young Sam government‟s initiatives were a precursor of the restructuring
programme conditioned by the IMF bailout, although that could not prevent the looming
economic crisis in 1997-8. The government formed the Education Deregulation Committee to
introduce a new contractual relation between the government and individual universities to
better ensure institutional „accountability‟. Enrolment quotas for private universities were
also abolished in 1995, and the new scope of performance-based funding for higher education
has been adopted to create new rules for evaluation and competition in the higher education
sector (Byun, 2008: 194-6; Kim, 2008a: 560).
Even the IMF, before the economic crisis in 1997/8, praised the Korean economic reform as
the government liberalised its markets by effectively dismantling tariff and non-tariff barriers
after the Uruguay Round of 1994, privatised the public sector while accepting foreign direct
investments, and freed restrictions on the movement of capital across the Korean border. Kim
Hee-Joon
7
(2002) critiques that: “It is ironic that the IMF, after the economic crisis struck,
strongly criticised Korea for „lack of liberalisation‟, when liberalisation itself for which the
IMF praised just a few years previously was the reason for the crisis itself.”
Overall, it was not possible to realise the grand policy visions of Segyehwa (globalisation) in
the Kim Young Sam period (1992-97). The country was soon hit by the major Asian financial
7
He was the witness to Workers/Four Years of IMF Structural Adjustment Program (Korea) in the International
Peoples‟ Tribunal on Debt convened by the network of Jubilee South, as part of the World Social Forum II, held
on February 1-2, 2002 (http://www.jubileesouth.org/tribunal/accusation_4/korea.htm).
To be published in Goodman, R., Kariya, T. and Taylor, J. (eds). The Changing Relationship between the State and Higher
Education in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea and the UK, Oxford Studies in Comparative Education Series,
Symposium Books (forthcoming).
15
crisis (1997-98) followed by the IMF bailout of the country‟s economy conditioned by the
Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP). At the outbreak of the economic crisis in
December 1997, the IMF and neo-liberal proponents - such as mainstream media and
international banks - blamed it on chaebols (which include transnational companies – e.g.
Samsung, Hyundai, LG), and their collusion with the government, excessive concessions to
the workers, and market protectionism, etc.. Despite the restructuring process, however, the
basic assumptions about higher education and its pragmatic and subordinate relations to the
national government and the chaebol remained unchanged in Korea.
The second phase (1998-2003):
After the Asian economic crisis, the government felt it necessary to reform urgently its
universities and human resource development programmes. The government then upgraded
the Ministry of Education (MOE) to Ministry of Education & Human Resource Development
(MEHRD). In January 2000, the government then led by President Kim Dae-jung announced
the vision for Korea to become an advanced, knowledge-based economy (KE). Only three
months later, the government put into effect a three-year action plan for implementing the KE
(Knowledge Economy) strategy. It consisted of 83 associated action plans in the five main
areas of information infrastructure, human resource development, development of
knowledge-based industry, science and technology, and elimination of the digital divide.
Following the government‟s guidelines for the creation of an internationalization framework,
universities also undertook reform. In the higher education sector, many Korean universities
had set their sights on creating an Asian education hub like Singapore and Hong Kong in
order to retain more Korean students and to attract more foreign students and already
concluded agreements with American, British and Australian universities for joint degrees,
study abroad programmes and faculty exchanges (World Bank 2010; Kim, 2008a; Inside
Higher Ed, 2007).
The government also launched the famous Brain Korea 21 (BK21) Project with the aim of
bringing selected major university research projects to a „world-class‟ level and increasing
the competitiveness of local universities. For that, 1.3 billion US dollars were invested in 120
institutions to run 440 projects for seven years (1999-2005). The successive government led
by the late President Roh Moo Hyun continued the second round of Brain Korea 21
programmes (2006-2013), emphasising technology development in collaboration with
industry (Kim, 2008a: 561-2).
To be published in Goodman, R., Kariya, T. and Taylor, J. (eds). The Changing Relationship between the State and Higher
Education in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea and the UK, Oxford Studies in Comparative Education Series,
Symposium Books (forthcoming).
16
The third phase (2003-2008):
The Roh Moo-hyun government (2003-2008) kept the strong egalitarian ethos in policy
making. However, the government‟s emphasis on equality and fairness in education policy
making meant the maintenance of standardised national education system in Korea. At the
same time, the Roh Moo-hyun government introduced another new National Vision and
Long-Term Fiscal Strategy in 2005, which was in line with the previous government‟s
strategy for „transforming Korea into a knowledge-driven economy‟. The proclaimed goals
included leapfrogging to top 10 knowledge-information leaders in the globe, upgrading the
educational environments to the OECD standard and harnessing Science and Technology
base to reach the G-7 standard (World Bank, 2006).
The new plan also addressed some of the issues where the previous government efforts had
achieved only limited or moderate success - most notably the educational reform. The Roh
Moo-hyun government put emphasis on “equality and participation” to fight against
polarisation trends throughout the Korean society, which has become more visible since after
the economic crisis and the subsequent neoliberal economic restructuring process as opposed
to focusing solely on efficiency in the value spectrum. For instance, the government launched
the NURI (New University for Regional Innovation) project in 2004, within which the role of
the university was defined as to be more tightly linked to the regional/local government‟s
development agenda and the regional industry. To achieve regional balance in development,
only HEIs located outside the capital region were considered as beneficiaries of the NURI
funds. US$1.4 billion was to be invested over a period of five years (2004-2009). The
government was also aiming then to restructure the HE system for concentration,
specialisation and diversification in each region through the NURI project (MOE, 2005; Kim,
2008a). The NURI project can be considered as a Korean version of the „triple helix‟ model
of university-industry-and regional government partnerships. At the same time, however, it
was a neoliberal -principled restructuring process in the higher education sector: e.g. mergers
and acquisitions (M&A), increasing the level of competition at top universities, establishing
professional graduate schools in Law, Medicine, Engineering, Business Administration, etc.
and finally the incorporation of national/public universities, which was benchmarking the
Japanese experience (ibid).
However, the continuing pattern of the government‟s regulatory policy framework has
increased conformity in higher education and limited educational choices. Accordingly, more
and more Korean students and parents started seeking alternatives abroad, and educational
migration has become a new trend in Korea. The current pattern of educational migration in
Korea points to the fact that there is strong public demand for internationalised higher
To be published in Goodman, R., Kariya, T. and Taylor, J. (eds). The Changing Relationship between the State and Higher
Education in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea and the UK, Oxford Studies in Comparative Education Series,
Symposium Books (forthcoming).
17
education at all levels: Korea has the world‟s largest number of students per capita who go
abroad for study (Kim, 2011, p. 296).
8
Given the growing trend of educational migration in Korea and also the ongoing pressure
from the WTO/GATS, the government removed restrictions for foreign institutions to provide
educational services directly in Korea. By doing so, the government was aiming to attract
more foreign direct investment and economic activities in the special Free Economic Zones,
with tax incentives, fast-track permit processing, etc., which was enacted in 2002. In
December 2005 the Korean government decided to allow foreign education institutes to open
at all levels from kindergartens, primary, secondary and high schools to universities in the
three designated International Free Economic Zones (IFEZs). The „Special Act on the
Establishment and Operation of Foreign Educational Institutions‟ in 2005 has (i) drastically
eased restrictions on the establishment of institutions by foreign universities; (ii) permitted
the transfer of surplus assets overseas under certain conditions if a school corporation was
liquidated; and (iii) even allowed the Korean government to fund foreign-owned universities.
The ultimate goal of Korea in the process of opening up the domestic education market is to
become an educational hub of Northeast Asia (Kim, 2008: 564-5; MEST, 2009). At least two
American partners, North Carolina State University and the State University New York at
Stony Brook have each received US$1 million funding to help develop undergraduate
programmes in the Songdo City IFEZ as an initial step to make „Songdo Global University
Campus‟, which is a collaborative attempt to blend Korean, American, and European
academic strengths (Chronicle of HE, 19 June 2009). The IFEZs authority hopes to attract
1,200 companies here and overseas by 2014 as part of its bid to become a hub for business
and logistics, IT and biotechnology, education and tourism and culture (Korea Times, 8 June
2010).
At the same time, a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) in educational services has been under
negotiation with the USA since 2007. The Korea-USA (KORUS) FTA, as indicated earlier, is
now expected to be ratified by the Korean National Assembly soon, following the US
ratification on 12 October 2011, which is intended to go into effect on 1 January 2012
(Chosun Ilbo, 14 October 2011). The Korean government expects that the FTA will not only
liberalise the education market but also can help to curb the increasing outward educational
8
Besides young adults and mature students enrolled at HEIs abroad, an increasing number of primary and
secondary school students in South Korea are also opting for foreign education abroad and this has shaped a
new form of educational migration in South Korea. In 1998 the number of Korean children studying abroad was
only 1,562 but this has rapidly increased since 2000. In 2006 it reached a peak estimated at 29,511 and then
slightly declined in 2008 to 27,349. Elementary students currently take up the largest share with 12, 531 going
abroad, compared with 8,888 middle school and 5,930 high school students respectively (Fulbright US-
Education Centre 6 November 2009: http://blog.educationusa.or.kr/category/korean-students-overseas/ ).
To be published in Goodman, R., Kariya, T. and Taylor, J. (eds). The Changing Relationship between the State and Higher
Education in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea and the UK, Oxford Studies in Comparative Education Series,
Symposium Books (forthcoming).
18
migration, which starts far before entering the tertiary level. All in all, if foreign universities
enter Korea and ignite competition, it is expected to help Korean universities develop more
competitively to meet global standards and curb outbound educational internationalisation.
The fourth phase (2008- present):
The incumbent conservative government (2008-13) led by President Lee Myung Bak has
continued to conform to the neoliberal political rationalities and business management
prescriptions to restructure the higher education sector. The Ministry of Education and
Human Resource Development (MOEHRD) was restructured to make the Ministry of
Education, Science and Technology (MEST), and the Special Law was introduced to enhance
public accountability and transparency of university management.
The Lee Myung Bak government initiated the World Class University (WCU) Project in
2008, along with the „High risk, high return‟ pioneer research project, which is to put public
investment in strategically important areas, especially basic research and advanced
technology R&D in Biotechnology, Nanotechnology and brain research. For the World Class
University (WCU) project (2008-2013), the government has allocated US$ 617 million to
raise the quality of research at 30 selected universities. Under the national subsidy initiative,
the MEST has set out to nurture new promising fields in basic sciences, and develop inter-
disciplinary studies that promote knowledge-based services and new industries
(http://wcu.nrf.go.kr/english/e_about/about_2.jsp).
The WCU project invites world-class scholars and researchers to develop world-class
academic programs and departments in Korean universities, which will ultimately lead to the
creation of world-class institutions of higher education in Korea. 81 foreign scholars,
including nine Nobel Prize winners were initially invited to the Korean universities
participating in the WCU project in 2008-9. In fact, the Lee Myung-bak government initiative
is not different from other national governments‟ programmes – e.g. the Chinese
government‟s 1000 Talents programme to recruit senior academics from the top 100 ranking
universities around the world; the Singapore government‟s recruitment of Dr. Coleman (the
top scientist who cloned the sheep Dolly) after the establishment of MIT and Stanford branch
campuses in Singapore; or the Saudi Arabian government‟s investment of US$100 million to
KAUST (established in 2009) to recruit most prestigious professors and students from abroad
(http://wcu.nrf.go.kr/english/e_about/about_2.jsp).
To be published in Goodman, R., Kariya, T. and Taylor, J. (eds). The Changing Relationship between the State and Higher
Education in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea and the UK, Oxford Studies in Comparative Education Series,
Symposium Books (forthcoming).
19
However, sceptics offer rather pessimistic views that such an approach would be hardly
conducive to creating a sustainable world-class research base as many of the international
scholars who have responded are already past their best work, and are required to stay in
Korea for just a semester, or at most two months a year in a three-year contract (The
Chronicle of Higher Education, 19 June 2009).
To achieve inbound internationalisation of universities in Korea, there has been a notable
increase in the number of English-medium courses, dual-degree and joint-degree programmes
with partner universities mostly in the USA and China. Korean universities are almost
obsessed with quantitative indices of internationalisation such as number of refereed journal
articles their faculty annually publish in English and with the international rankings
established by the Times Higher Education and other rating bodies. In this trend, top-tier
private universities – such as Yonsei, Korea and Ewha - have recently established all-English
liberal arts colleges to attract both Korean and international students, and the condition of
international academic staffing has also changed recently. Tenure-track positions are finally
open to foreign academics; although most of foreign academics in Korean universities are
still with a short-term contract (Kim, 2008b).
As part of internationalisation strategies, Yonsei University has taken an extreme measure in
international academic staffing policy for Underwood International College (UIC): only
foreign nationals can apply for the full-time faculty positions at UIC, Yonsei University - as
if those foreign passport holders would guarantee the international standard of UIC. At the
same time, no Korean nationals, however excellent they may be as international scholars,
would be eligible to apply for any faculty position at Yonsei UIC, unless they had given up
their Korean nationality. Overall, it looks like the international staffing policy at Yonsei UIC
is a counter-discrimination practice against Korean nationality in the name of
„internationalisation‟. Non-Korean/foreign academics have been seldom given full tenure and
only a limited number of universities offer non-discriminatory rates to their non-Korean
faculty. This apparent discriminatory practice has given few highly qualified foreign
professors sufficient motivation to work for any Korean university on a long term basis.
Given the unequal terms of employment contract offered to non-Korean academics in Korean
universities, it is not surprising that many of the „foreign‟ academics employed in Yonsei
UIC are, in fact, Koreans returning from the USA as American citizens (Kim, 2008b).
According to the Times Higher Education-QS World University Rankings in 2009, Seoul
National University (SNU) was placed in the 47th, but when it was measured against the
proportion of international faculty, SNU was ranked 363th - near the bottom of the league
To be published in Goodman, R., Kariya, T. and Taylor, J. (eds). The Changing Relationship between the State and Higher
Education in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea and the UK, Oxford Studies in Comparative Education Series,
Symposium Books (forthcoming).
20
table (THE QS World University Rankings 2009: http://www.topuniversities.com/university-
rankings).
Meanwhile, the number of foreign students studying in Korean universities has also notably
increased. Although most of international students come with scholarships, their presence
makes a fresh change in the student profiles. On average, more than one-third (more than 40
per cent in some universities such as Seoul National and Hanyang Universities) of students
who enrolled in postgraduate degree courses on the Korean language and literature at six
major universities in Seoul are international. They are not just from neighbouring countries
like China and Japan but also from Thailand, Burma, Vietnam, Indonesia, Uzbekistan, USA,
etc. (Yonhap News, 8 July 2010). Such an expansion and diversification of foreign students
studying in Korean universities can be attributed the government‟s „Study Korea Project‟ and
also an improved image of Korea and its economic significance internationally.
All in all, both the government and universities are eager to recruit more foreign academics
and students, as a part of the WCU project and the overall „internationalisation‟ of Korean
higher education institutions. However, international academic staffing is often considered as
a short-term way to meet a policy target in Korea. Internationalisation policies in Korea are
still framed by ethno-national boundaries.
Conclusion
In reviewing the idiosyncrasies of the State-Higher Education relationship in South Korea,
this chapter tried to pinpoint non-changes; more precisely what I called in the title: surprising
continuities.
First of all, the theme of economic pragmatism and vocational advantage is continuously
visible in the State regulatory relationship with higher education in Korea. The practical
purpose and use of higher education by both the State and individuals (in relation to better
employability, status, and greater financial rewards in life) has been always strong in Korea
across different epochs of the Confucian state, the Japanese colonial state, the developmental
State, and now perhaps the neoliberal „market state‟ (Bobbitt, 2002).
In the early Confucian period, the theme of vocational advantage was visible in higher
education through the civil service examination system, even though the Confucian tradition
did not stress economic productivity or economic relations. There were, however, personal
To be published in Goodman, R., Kariya, T. and Taylor, J. (eds). The Changing Relationship between the State and Higher
Education in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea and the UK, Oxford Studies in Comparative Education Series,
Symposium Books (forthcoming).
21
forms of vocational advantage. The Confucian examination system was a government-
orchestrated system of employment testing, to reproduce the Scholar-Mandarin class, i.e.
bureaucratic generalists familiar with an accepted ethical outlook and body of knowledge, but
not engaging in epistemic disputation. It was a “high-stakes” assessment, with an extremely
low passing rate (Suen and Yu, 2006). Korea fully institutionalised the Confucian principle of
meritocratic promotion through the civil service examination system – gwageo in Korean –
which was fully adopted in AD 958 and lasted until the late nineteenth century. The
secondary continuity here is that the Confucian meritocratic principle of examination-based
selection of civil servants has survived strong regardless of modernisation and changes in
political and education systems. In other words, test-driven education has been a strategy for
survival and success in Korea always; and the Confucian scholar-Mandarin tradition has also
survived, forming a close collaborative relationship between the government officials and the
university academic profession. (Kim, 2009, pp. 859-861).
In the colonial period (1910-1945), the practical advantages for individuals of using higher
education - to ensure better employability, higher status, and greater financial rewards - were
sharpened by the vocationally oriented, Japanese colonial higher education system (Kim,
2001; 2007). The function of the university was subordinated to the colonial state‟s projects,
which affected also mobility and identity. During the colonial period (1910-45), Koreans‟
access to higher education was extremely limited. In the single State University - Kyung
Sung Imperial University established in 1926 and modelled on Tokyo Imperial University -
there was an enrolment quota for Koreans. They were limited to one third of the total
admissions, while two thirds were allocated for the Japanese expatriates living in Korea.
Furthermore, the indirect channel for transferring western knowledge in Korea was a
significant colonial feature of the Japanese Imperial University in Korea. At Kyung Sung
Imperial University, the medium of instruction was entirely Japanese (Kim, 2001). Noting the
new prestige given to pragmatic fields of knowledge in the colonial state education system,
prospective Korean candidates were likely to enrol in higher educational institutions mostly
for relatively low-level vocational preparation (in teacher training, and in the vocational
technical fields), or opted for private higher education offered by American missionaries and
Korean nationalist intellectual precursors (Kim, 2007, p. 43; see also Uchida, 1984, p. 53).
Thus pragmatic approaches and instrumental uses of higher education are continuous across
different epochs. The Japanese colonial State‟s priority in Korean higher education (1910-
1945) was to emphasise vocational training and technical knowledge production. The Korean
Developmental State led by military governments (1961-1991) focused on science and
technology. In the current neoliberal market period (since 1992), Korean civilian
To be published in Goodman, R., Kariya, T. and Taylor, J. (eds). The Changing Relationship between the State and Higher
Education in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea and the UK, Oxford Studies in Comparative Education Series,
Symposium Books (forthcoming).
22
governments started to put more emphasis on basic and interdisciplinary research in science
and high technology and also have begun to support humanities and social sciences,
expecting from both the practical contributions of higher education and universities to the
development of new knowledge-based economy.
The second characteristic of continuity since the early colonial period is that Koreans began
to create and use the private sector of higher education, partly (as indicated above) for
purposes of confirming a non-Japanese identity and for confirming overseas cultural links.
This split between private and public higher education has continued – but there is also a
strong continuity in the State‟s insistence on controlling and defining the principle of both
sectors. Thus, the utilitarian purpose of higher education and the themes of identity and the
binding „accountability‟ of the University to the State – without questioning the contractual
relationship to determine higher education funding patterns – has contributed to maintaining
two sectors (the private and the public) but also to blurring the boundaries between the public
and private. Given the possibilities for a binary public/private ambivalence with the State‟s
regulatory relationship with higher education in Korea since colonial times, all universities
have, to a surprising extent, continued to serve the State‟s emphasis on the socially utilitarian
and , technically functional uses of higher education.
A third surprising continuity is more subtle. As indicated, the function of the university was
subordinated to the colonial state‟s projects. But as a consequence the pursuit of liberal
knowledge for its own end in the English model, or Bildung in the German model, were not
transmitted in Korea. The cultural valuation of knowledge as self cultivation in the long
Confucian learning tradition in Korea was also weakened while shamanistic survival
strategies became strong (Kim, I.W., 1988)
9
. These patterns helped to permit a strong motif
in Korean higher education: its over-emphasis on usefulness. Studying abroad especially in
the USA as early as the school level as well as at first-degree level has been seen as a form of
escape from this over-emphasis on usefulness and at the same time a means of adding
usefulness given the prestige and credentials attached to overseas degrees – especially
American PhDs. It is in this sense that higher education has been seen as a private good, and
it has been significantly dependent on foreign knowledge and education providers.
Paradoxically, the neoliberal rationality of “Do more with less” spirit has always been an
important basic principle in the Korean government‟s higher education policy making and
9
According to In Whoe Kim (1988), the indigenous value system of Korea can be traced in its long surviving
shamanistic culture. The Korean shamanistic values have remained strong through the modern (colonial and
post-colonial) state‟s social promotion system, and the traditionally dominant cultural code of practice and the
definition of excellence inherited by the Confucian literati class became absorbed in the newly legitimated,
situation-oriented, opportunistic cultural code.
To be published in Goodman, R., Kariya, T. and Taylor, J. (eds). The Changing Relationship between the State and Higher
Education in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea and the UK, Oxford Studies in Comparative Education Series,
Symposium Books (forthcoming).
23
implementation. Accordingly, the system has always been heavily subsidised by private
investment - tuition fees and corporate endowment. So there is a peculiar mix of notions of
higher education as a „private‟ good with instrumental value but somehow overlapping with
and encroaching on the public sphere.
Fourthly, the triadic relationship between the State, the chaebol and higher education in
Korea is a continuity. Oddly enough and with hindsight, it can be suggested that Korea had
invented early its own version of „triple helix‟ in the course of rapid development, and it has
intensified contemporaneously, incorporating the neo-liberal triple helix model of university-
industry-and regional government partnerships in the efforts to develop „world-class‟
universities in Korea. At the same time, there is effort to concentrate both public and private
funding on selected higher education institutions to develop world-class universities - as
exemplified in the success story of POSTECH (Pohang University of Science and
Technology).
Fifthly, there is a strange continuity: the developmental state and the neo-liberal state models
in Korea have merged into a symbiosis. That is (i) what used to be the colonial idiosyncrasies
about pragmatic approaches to higher education has become a global trend as framed by the
neoliberal agendas of „market states‟ (Bobbitt, 2002). In other words, the general direction of
the State regulatory relationship with higher education in Korea over the last twenty years has
followed the Anglo-American neoliberal model of business management and audit
mechanisms to promote competition among higher education institutions, and to provide
selective support for high-performing institutions in the regulatory framework of competition.
Paradoxically, the new rules of competition among universities for the available national
research funds and a new evaluation system for measuring good academic performance (as
this is defined by the government) have consolidated the government‟s centralised
regulations over all higher educational institutions (both public and private), regardless of
funding patterns.
The control of the developmental state has mutated into a particular Korean form of the neo-
liberal state, and that has been now justified through neoliberal technologies of governance
by the State. Overall, the Korean case is an interesting example of transition and continuity
from colonial to neoliberal displacement of knowledge and commodification of higher
education.
The sixth continuity is that despite the process of globalisation in Korea through Free Trade
Agreements (FTAs), and International Free Economic Zones (IFEZs), the government‟s
higher education policy framework for internationalisation is still filtered by ethnicity and
To be published in Goodman, R., Kariya, T. and Taylor, J. (eds). The Changing Relationship between the State and Higher
Education in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea and the UK, Oxford Studies in Comparative Education Series,
Symposium Books (forthcoming).
24
nationality - against the principle of equality of opportunity and the universal human rights.
Unlike in the UK, USA, Australia or Canada, „foreign‟ academics – as defined by ethnicity
and „nationality‟ (which is often arbitrarily applied by individual institutions as indicated
earlier) - are not employed on the same legal terms as the local staff (Kim, 2008b). Overall
there is no complete legal protection for the equality of opportunity for foreigners in Korea as
yet. The ethno-national boundaries are still stark especially when we examine the institutional
contexts of policy implementation beyond the official policy and the internal sociology and
cultural assumptions of daily practice inside academe. This may be a bit similar to the
Japanese case in the past, but there is more exclusive ethno-nationalism in Korea, serving as
boundaries of non-inclusion inside Korean academic culture.
Thus, Korea raises, in some very strange forms - i.e. its complex changing-but-continuous
relationships between the State and higher education, the question of accountability for whom,
in whose interests, and for what purposes and what will be the long-term consequences?
The Korean example implies a sharp contemporary question of relevance to many countries:
whether universities are now actually able to provide an independent alternative voice to that
of the corporate interests and the State? Granted that universities are still aimed at „new
knowledge‟ creation, what is the nature of that knowledge, what is its form, and what is the
creation of new knowledge embedded in an educational role, or merely in the contemporary
task of producing a lot of skills and training in a lot of people for the sake of „the economy‟.
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