The paradoxical effect of democratisation on the South Korean education system in the 1980s and early 1990s

Educational grievances made educational democratisation an important issue in the 1980s and 1990s during South Korea's democratic consolidation. Educational democratisers sought to address these through greater freedom and autonomy for teachers, students and parents combined with teacher unionisation. Some of the excesses of the highly centralised, economically utilitarian educational system of the authoritarian period were mitigated in the 1990s, but reformers had to make a coalition with neoliberal bureaucrats to consolidate democracy. As a consequence, educational reforms focused on deregulation and student choice facilitated by diversified autonomous educational institutions, including private schools at all levels. This had the paradoxical effect of meeting some goals of the democratisers for choice and autonomy while eliminating the equalisation of schools that many of the democratisers also favoured.