Since its establishment of the Korean government, Korea has achieved a remarkable development in education for the past 7 decades. The main driving forces of Korean education lie in quantitative growth and qualitative improvement. What is noteworthy of quantitative development of Korean education is not just the size and speed of the growth but also the procedure of the outstanding achievement. Although Korea intended to realize the compulsory elementary education at the national level shortly after the establishment of the Korean government, the education plan was suspended due to the outbreak of the Korean War and later resumed as a process of post-war education reconstruction amidst the poor educational environment and lack of school facilities.
The achievement of the national education system established for the past 7 decades can be summed up as the rapid distribution of quality education when considering the phenomenal aspects. However, the unprecedented educational expansion and outstanding performance in academic ability in the basic education level also prompted problems such as excessive expenditures in private education, unlimited competition, inequality of opportunities and gap in educational levels. The reason that Korean education could develop in its both quantitative and qualitative aspects despite such limits in its education system can be found in the fact that the nation and the people made a concerted effort to establish a quality education system.
Such educational characteristics have been succeeded even in the face of numerous difficult situations both at home and abroad since the introduction of public education system prior to the founding of the Korean government. Korea accumulated the potential growth in education in the transformation process from the traditional to the modern education and achieved educational development after regaining its sovereignty by preserving the potential even under Japan’s 35 years of colonial rule. Now, the possibility of development in Korean education will further expand based on equality, excellence and effectiveness that help to manage education in both quantitative and qualitative aspects.
Now, Korea should contribute to the development of the developing countries by sharing its experience in compulsory elementary education with them. In particular, many countries that need to establish the basic educational infrastructure due to conflicts or natural disasters are paying keen attention to Korea's experience in educational development. In order to understand Korea's successful compulsory elementary education policy in the post war era, a simultaneous approach to both internal educational factors (by period and area) and external educational factors is needed. In other words, it is necessary to pay attention to Korea's process to implement compulsory elementary education during the war as well as before and after the war, and analyze the dynamic relationships between educational development and social, political and economic development. In doing so, we can produce outstanding patterns and trends, and examine the achievements and features of Korea's post-war elementary education implementation policies and the limitations and future works based on them.
