Beschreibung:
The present essay is about the evolution of the Korean education system and the effects it has on the Korean society. South Korea can look back on a history of rapid growth and industrialisation since the sixties of the last century. Among various factors that contributed to South Korea's unprecedented development, we can make out South Korea's school system that has gained worldwide reputation. What are the roots of its effectiveness? To what extent education in South Korea leads to the equal distribution of life chances? In how far it is more than just preparing people for the labour market? In order to answer these questions the authors look back further in the history of Korea and explain the relevance of certain cultural and religious ideas to Korea's social structure. Korean scholarship is deeply rooted in a centuries-old tradition of Korean Confucianism, but the modern educational system started to take shape due to cultural influences of Western powers and under colonial rule. In the decades after the Korean War, South Korean governments put much stress on an egalitarian development of human resources. With the introduction of market-oriented reforms at the end of the last century, however, education is becoming more and more a privilege of the wealthy and powerful classes of the Korean society.