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The lifelong learning ecosystem inKorea: evolution of learning capitalism?Soonghee Han aa Seoul National University , KoreaPublished online: 29 Aug 2008.

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INT. J. OF LIFELONG EDUCATION, VOL. 27, NO. 5 (SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 2008), 517–524

International Journal of Lifelong Education ISSN 0260-1370 print/ISSN 1464-519X online © 2008 Taylor & Francis http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals

DOI: 10.1080/02601370802051637

The lifelong learning ecosystem in Korea: evolution of learning capitalism?

SOONGHEE HANSeoul National University, Korea

Taylor and Francis LtdTLED_A_305331.sgm10.1080/02601370802051637International Journal of Lifelong Education0260-1370 (print)/1464-519X (online)Original Article2008Taylor & Francis2750000002008SoongheeHanlearn@snu.ac.kr

Korean lifelong learning in practice is gradually adapted by neo-liberals and the discourses ofthe economic market. Considering that the public foundation of Korean education is fragileto cope with the market challenge, the whole picture of Korean learning ecology is rapidlydistorted towards the establishment of the learning market and the challenge it presents topublic education. This paper attempts to grasp the evolution of the lifelong learning ecosys-tem in Korea and to explain the meaning of the learning market in this context. I am goingto argue that (1) the emergence of the learning market changed the traditional learningecosystem significantly; (2) the discourse of lifelong learning in this context also rapidlydeconstructs the code of ‘education’ and replaces the learning system to fit to learning capi-talism as a part of the knowledge economy; and (3) the Korean case clearly reveals thechanges in the complex ecosystem of lifelong learning in this way.

Introduction

Lifelong learning and the learning society are one of the newly emerging conceptualorganisms in the world of educational discourse. The notion grows with self-organ-isation and elaborates itself in degrees of complexity. Since UNESCO delivered asimple model in the early 1970s, it has ‘evolved’ itself and recently unveiled itshidden nature with complexity. As the notion of lifelong learning evolves, so doesthe learning society.

Learning is a transformative mechanism through which humans remake theirlives and thinking. It also changes the social vision, mode of communication and theway of weaving networks. It influences the pattern of the social fabric, and in thisregard, the lifelong learning that I am dealing with in this paper implies a particularmode or pattern of social management systems of learning interconnected with theglobal knowledge economy needed to reproduce it. Raven and Stephenson note intheir book Competencies in the Learning Society, ‘Any society that claims to be a “learningsociety” must have a societal information-handling and management system whichis capable of learning and managing itself’ (Raven and Stephenson 2001: 4–5). The‘social information-handling and management system’ Raven mentions is by nomeans a technical tool but a social framework for knowledge handling and itscodification to fit in the social characteristics. The learning society also accompanies

Soonghee Han is Professor of Lifelong Education at the Department of Education, Seoul National Univer-sity. His academic interests are comparative studies in lifelong learning, popular adult education andlearning ecology. Correspondence: Department of Education, College of Education, Seoul NationalUniversity, Seoul, 151-748, Korea. Email: learn@snu.ac.kr

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a specific mode of social learning handling and management system, which we call‘lifelong learning system’.

The lifelong learning as a new code of education system is now challenging theold educational order of schools and universities. As Rinne noted: ‘The principle oflifelong learning challenges many of the principles of the older school system’(Rinne 1998: 117–8). It changes the way in which the education programs are sociallyselected and codified, learning activities are organised and unitised, and the learningoutcomes are exchanged in the labour market. The main point of challenging theold school order has something to do with the logic of the ‘learning market’, a partic-ular mode of learning society or a new platform of lifelong learning game. AsSchuetze nicely puts it, lifelong learning has changed its focus from a somewhat ideal-ist reform model to a human capital based model, and ‘this shift from welfare stateto market rule is a main plank of the dominant neo-liberal agenda’ (Schuetze 2006:302). Under the symbolism of the learning market, the elements of learning thatwere once organised under the rule of traditional schools with the academic fortress,including education providers, learning resources, definition of qualifications, etc.,are being re-merged to maximise the degree of exchange and accumulation to fitinto the capital forms.

This paper attempts to grasp the evolution of the lifelong learning ecosystem inKorea and to explain the meaning of the learning market in this context. In thispaper, I am going to argue that:

(1) the emergence of ‘learning market’ changed the traditional learningecosystem significantly, which moves towards the establishment of ‘learn-ing capitalism’;

(2) the discourse of lifelong learning in this context also rapidly de-constructsthe code of ‘education’ and replaces learning system to fit the HumanResource Development (HRD) as a key part of learning capitalism;

(3) the Korean case clearly reveals the changes in the complex ecosystem of life-long learning in this way.

The evolution of learning capitalism

The learning economy

In searching the UNESCO documents, I found an interesting article. The title wasLifelong learning in the North, education for all in the South (Torres 2002). Through read-ing this, I immediately realised that it was not about the geographical discrepancybut rather about the two contrasting contexts of lifelong learning practice: lifelonglearning as part of the professional training on the global market economy in theNorth, and of the basic literacy education community-driven education for theunderprivileged in the South.

As advocated by Paul Lengrand, the origin of lifelong education in the early1970s was through the voices of radical social transformation, standing for democ-racy, equity and justice. However, the global capitalist atmosphere and the idea ofneo-liberal conservatism since the 1980s steadily colonised the idea within theterritory of the market symbolism (Coffield 2000, Gorard and Rees 2002, Holford,et al. 1998). Global capitalism wanted to invent a new social learning handling

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system that gave weight to more practical knowledge by superseding the ‘oldacademic ivory tower’. The idea of the learning market metaphor that typicallyillustrates the future of learning society in the work of Edwards et al. (2002) and theidea of the ‘schooling for tomorrow’ project of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (OECD 2004) meets in this intersection.

In my view, a learning society is not a superficial symbolism of a knowledge econ-omy, but rather an essential mechanism to make it operate. If we look closely insidethe logic, it is easily noticeable that the discourse of the knowledge economy cannotstand alone without the logic of learning society theory. The key for this curiosity liesin the nature of the ‘tacit knowledge’. Let me explain this more.

Knowledge economists believe that the fundamental of knowledge capitalismconsists of the two modes of knowledge known as explicit and tacit knowledge (Allee1997, Wills 1998). Explicit knowledge is ‘the knowledge as a product’ that can bestored and exchanged as a form of knowledge capital. Tacit knowledge instead is‘the knowledge as process’, learned and produced but not-yet-capitalised, so it is nottradable in any means (Burton-Jones 1999). While explicit knowledge is possessedby the firms in the value of intellectual property, copyright, or patents, or ‘sold andbought’ from the shelf of the market, tacit knowledge comes with the person whoholds it. Differently from explicit knowledge, tacit knowledge continuously changes,grows or extinguishes in one’s experience. Considering that the beauty of the knowl-edge economy discourse comes from the discovery of the hidden value of the tacitknowledge and its supposed capital value, this non-tradability is nothing but a para-dox of the theory, and it unsurprisingly considers the theory of learning economyin part.

Now you can see a paradoxical turn over between the two theories. The vitality ofknowledge economy, as Nonaka and Takeuchi explain, comes from the power ofdeveloping tacit knowledge of the employee and its ‘externalisation’ (Nonaka andTakeuchi 1995). However, as soon as it is externalised or commodified at the shelfof the market to put it differently, the value decreases rapidly. Imagine the prices ofsoftware in the market. The core of value creation depends upon the tacit knowledgehandling system rather than the explicit one. Then, look closely at what the natureof the tacit knowledge handling system really means. The tacit knowledge exists withthe various categories of competences or, as Sternberg et al. (2000) named it, prac-tical intelligence. It is about learning and learning management systems. As knowl-edge capitalism develops, so does the learning capitalism in which competences ashuman resources embedded in the labour are produced, traded and consumed.Lifelong learning systems under the learning economy are how the processes aremanaged and maintained. This is what the Program for International StudentAssessment (PISA) or Program for International Assessment of Adult Competencies(PIAAC) of OECD today intends (OECD 2003, Rychen and Salganik 2003).

The universal exchange framework in the learning market

By nature, traditional schooling is armed with the modern form of knowledge thathas been fabricated as ‘discipline’ or academic subjects, and this discipline proceedsto the coming generations (Foucault 1977). The notion of competences radicallydeconstructs the castle of academic subjects and the code of discipline beneath it,since it employs the code of workplace knowledge production. The competence

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becomes a key word that connects the two worlds of education and work. In thisstream, the academic degree alone seems to be weakened to claim its own justification,and rather faces the need to prove its value according to the competence-equivalentvalue scale. The formal education system that has solely monopolised the world ofeducation came to be interconnected with the non-traditional non-formal andinformal education markets, which we name the lifelong learning market. To put itdifferently, formal schooling is being relativised with the non-traditional educationsystem. If not, it is getting rapidly isolated being surrounded by the learning market.

What recently the PISA or PIAAC intended to do is to implement the needs ofworkplace in the process of education and training. As clearly revealed, compe-tence-based curriculum changes are located in the centre of these OECD programs.If PISA was for the school system change, PIAAC for lifelong learning, the DeSeCoproject by OECD vigorously pursued to develop the nature and the scale of ‘corecompetences’. In short, social management of learning in the learning society issupposed to deal with competencies as a core signal of curriculum.

The notion of competencies implies two significant dimensions of considerations:

(1) Competences are the principle of lifelong learning in nature, because theyare derived from the adult workplace performance and applied to the schoolcurriculum standards.

(2) It radically challenges the traditional school system that is constructed uponthe foundation of the academic subjects system. It accomplishes the founda-tion of consumer-driven learning market. The recently developed idea ofpractical intelligence or successful intelligence also supports the trend onbehalf of the corporate desire for human resource development beyond thetraditional academic schooling.

The value of competence is expressed with qualification structures. In otherwords, the qualifications turn out to be the monetary form of the market signals thatexpress the exchange value of the competencies. The credit as a component of qual-ification acts as a unit of common currency that can be accumulated with others intoachievement profiles (Davies and Bynner 2000: 121).

As a consequence, the corresponding education programs are being standard-ised. Contrasting to the school system in that the credit conferment was guaranteedby the numbers of hours of study in the classroom, competence-based curriculummainly counts the achievement of supposedly targeted competences. In this regard,academic subjects are transformed gradually from traditional academic bodies ofknowledge (such as maths, science, social studies, etc.) to something that reflectsthe anatomy of competence lists, such as critical thinking, creativity, communicationwith foreign languages, etc., if available. Some examples of global standardisationin education credentials through National Qualification Framework , Qualificationand Credit Framework or Bologna process in the higher education area create the‘universal exchange framework in lifelong learning’, in which vocational trainingprograms are also re-arranged to be compatible with academic courses. The univer-sal compliant standard was invented to make the non-formal education and voca-tional training equivalent to academic formal education program.

The change makes academic schooling and work capabilities directly linked andhave brought about a mass change in the traditional school ecology. In this situa-tion, with the endorsement of government, the learning market is permitted to

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create a relatively well structured ‘market version’ of learning recognition systemscorresponding to that of ‘official’ ones (see National Qualification Frameworks asan example). Now, private institutions whose education outcomes are recognisedand accredited will move more rapidly to comply with the labour market standards,and the result of the learning will be also treated as ‘official credentials if everythingthat matters is learning outcomes, not input controls’.

The scenario is not merely a fiction. The logical steps are indeed what we areobserving at the moment. The extended context of the learning society supposedlyincludes formal, non-formal, and informal learning activities, which were not evenpossible in the old mode of learning management system. In summary, in all aspectsincluding competences, learning and education program unit standardisation, thequalification systems are making the evolution of an unprecedented and unheardsocietal learning management system possible in the name of ‘lifelong learning’ and‘learning society’.

Korean context

I have built a theoretical structure above that shows that: (1) the knowledgeeconomy requires a lifelong learning market as an embedded core sub-system; and(2) the new learning system inevitably undermines the foundations of the previoustraditional public school system. In this section, I am going to connect the logic ofglobal lifelong learning market theory with Korean experience.

The evolution of lifelong learning discourse and practice in Korea

While the idea and vision of lifelong education was introduced much earlier, it wasnot until the 1990s that Korean society paid special attention to make it reality. Koreawas officially exposed to ‘lifelong education’ with the Constitution amended in 1980with the inserted Article 31 that stated: ‘The state is responsible to promote lifelongeducation.’ In 1982, the Adult Education Law was enacted, promoting non-formaleducation and community adult education that supplemented the educationalopportunities to the socially underprivileged. The vision of the learning society,although naïve and perceived as educational utopia hopefully achieved in a nearfuture, augmented the mood.

However, the reality was not so optimistic. Indeed, it came with economiccrisis. The Asian currency crisis in 1997 attacked the Korean economy, whichresulted in major companies becoming bankrupt and subsequent lay-offs, leadingto unprecedented numbers of unemployed people on the labour market. Theincident stimulated the Ministry of Education to move faster to adapt lifelonglearning discourse and practice in reality, but in a somewhat different direction.

The first response was the replacement of the former Adult Education Law withLifelong Education Law in 1999, which turned the flow of lifelong learning policytowards exploring new methods of alternative educational credential acquisitions,especially at the higher education level, with learning outcome recognitions includingcredit bank system, corporate universities and cyber colleges, paid study leaves, etc.

The second action of the Ministry was to reframe the lifelong learning policyunder the framework of national human resource development and changed the

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name to Ministry of Education and Human Resource Development (MOEHRD).Now, National Human Resource Development (NHRD) framework took overthe commission to change the whole education and training system to fit into thelearning economy, including the primary and secondary school reform, highereducation restructuring, promotion of vocational and workplace training, and R &D managements, under which the lifelong education as for the underprivileged wastaking restricted policy matters regarding adult basic and liberal education at thecommunity level. Indeed the school credentialism has long been criticised: in partic-ular, corporate employers had complained about the impracticality of academicqualifications, while the symbolism of ‘competence-based society’ was ideologicallysupported to replace the old school credentialism.

However, NHRD policy was impeded in the middle of nowhere. Despite theBureau of NHRD still claiming the authority to plan lifelong learning policy ingeneral, the lack of appropriate regulatory means and government expenditure toimplement the policy made the plan impossible. The policy faced a ‘double-bindsituation’ (using Bateson’s terminology (Bateson 1972)). The broad band of life-long learning notion became rapidly instrumentalised and public school reformswere stagnated, while adult learning was put into the hands of the learning market.

Evolution of market-driven learning economy

The participation rate of Korean adults in continuing and recurrent education isrelatively low. Only 26.7% of adults participate in any kinds of lifelong learning(2006 data compared with Sweden (56%), Denmark (52%) or Finland (48%))(OECD 2000). The reason is partly because adult learning in Korea is either capit-alised or commodified.

The Korean government has never considered adult learning part of the publicsector. It was the work of the private sector. Most of the adult continuing educationwas taken care of in the internal labour market training system, and big companiessuch as Samsung, LG, and Hyundai had established their own closed employeetraining system with corporate funds as a part of their capital accumulation. In thecutting-edge sectors, managing employees’ learning became a key ‘resource’ toproduce knowledge assets. The learning management system became a crucial partof industry, in which the production, distribution, and consumption of HRD wereintegrated, connecting them with financial as well as legal systems of the firms.

Meanwhile, the growth of the learning industry and consumption market is oneof the fundamental aspects of the knowledge economy. The private instruction andconsulting business in Korea became a rapidly growing sector and probably one ofthe largest employers in the labour market. The stock price of the top 10 privatelearning business companies has increased by 10 times during the last four years.Though not calculated officially, the number of the employees in this sector will easilybeat the number of public teachers. The learning consumption market had alsogrown rapidly during a decade in which a variety of qualities of learning commoditiesare sold and bought. It covers indeed ‘lifelong and life-wide’ areas of learning. Theshortage of public childcare resulted in the flourishing of private kindergartens forpre-school children. Primary and secondary students have at least one or two privatetutors, and the volume of the private learning economy for them was estimatedreportedly as 3.95% of GDP. Adults use the learning industry for vocational

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qualifications and career changes. The volume has not yet been surveyed officiallybut a government household survey last year reported that over 25% of the house-hold expenditure per month was spent for private tutoring for family members.

Another issue is about the learning divide. Recently the Korean governmentbegan to realise that the learning deficit cannot be made up with the simple welfaresystem. New terms such as ‘education welfare’ or ‘learnfare’ policies began to beimplemented. Learning itself has created a large welfare system.

Challenging the public

The emerging learning market seriously challenges the public education system. Todescribe it in short, the Korean public education system has mostly relied uponprivate money. To some extent this was inevitable, because from the ruins of theKorean War (1950–1953) Korea rapidly established a mass public education systemwith mass higher education into which 82% of high school graduates are currentlyentered. The driving force of the growth was private money and still currently 40%of lower secondary schools, 60% of upper secondary schools, and 80% of the univer-sities and colleges are private. Nevertheless, the system was identified as ‘public’since the government has invented all kinds of rules and regulations that bind theprivate schools to be compliant with government education policies.

Now the schools and universities are threatened by the private learning industryand learning markets. The competences of school teachers are criticised in compar-ison with the private tutors; students are more dependent on the private institutionsand waste time at schools; the knowledge-based labour market does not give trust tothe competences of the domestic university graduates any more; and more than200,000 students a year are going abroad to study, many of whom apply directly tothe Ivy League US colleges and universities and bypass the domestic public educationsystem (YTN Website). Almost as same amount of private money is spent directlyfrom consumers’ pockets as it is on public education expenditure.

Conclusion

Metaphorically the notion of ‘learning society’ has many similarities with ‘globalsociety’, in the sense that both emphasise the political agenda of a ‘better world’with embedded humanistic values. However in reality the ‘invisible hand’ of thecapitalist wheel reifies the chosen commodified value and victimises the ‘have-nots’in the process. If the bloodless restructuring of global capitalism hides the victims ofthe local traditional economy, shown in the anti-WTO or anti-FTA movements, thenewly emerging ‘learning market’ is reshaping the picture of public education aswell as adult learning by crystallising the value of learning capital into the process oflifelong learning. The process will be accelerated with the speed of the learningmarket expansion. In my view, the game has just begun.

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