Various enthusiastic efforts and policy initiatives have been continued to reform the Korean education since the 1980s. Teacher reform is regarded as one of the essential element of national education reform movement. Because previous and current efforts made in Korea have been very intensive and nationwide, and the government has initiated them, it might be an example of national trials to reform teachers and teaching.

The direction of recent teacher reform during last five years in Korea is considered as two fold: one is quality control, the other is teacher empowerment. A good example of quality control effort is a periodic evaluation system for teacher training institutes since 1998. The example of teacher empowerment is "A Strategy Agenda for the Advancement of Teaching Professions" in 2000. These two examples to reform teachers and teaching are highlighted in this article.

Regardless of various efforts during last two decades, achievement of high quality teaching forces does not seem to be accomplished yet. Yet, it seems to be an on-going and very complicated business. Doubts still remain about the quality of teacher professionalism. The lessons from the Korean experience is that efforts and initiatives led by the government always have yield limitations in accomplishing expected purposes.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the Korean teacher reform led by the government in terms of continuous trials and failures. The direction of teacher reform in Korea is considered as two fold: one is quality control, the other is teacher empowerment. In this article, numerous efforts to improve teacher professionalism for last five years since 1996 are to be outlined as an introduction. Then, the national evaluation system for teacher training institutes is to be highlighted as a quality control mechanism. The on-going government agenda that is aiming at teacher empowerment is to be reviewed. Finally, discussion about the remaining issues and lessons are to be followed.

Introduction to the Korean Teacher Reform

High-quality education is the key to building a successful society in the 21st century of knowledge-based global competition. Recent education reform movement in many countries reflects this perspective. In Korea, various enthusiastic efforts and policy initiatives have been continued to reform education since the 1980s. Teacher reform is regarded as one of the essential element of the recent national education reform movement because there has been social consensus that competent and dedicated teachers are critical in realizing high-quality education.

From the historical point of view, the Korean government and education society has constantly tried to improve the quality of teacher education, to attract high-quality college graduates, and to facilitate teacher professionalism. This direction might be the same in other countries. The teacher quality or professionalism in Korea is generally regarded as a compound concept of positive thinking and attitudes about teaching, continuous self-training and development, good knowledge on the subject area, positive perspectives and logical thinking capability, and maintaining good health (Song, 2000, pp. 23-24).

Among various efforts during the past two decades, transformation of elementary school teacher training system from two-year junior college to four-year university granting bachelor's degree seems to be noticeable. During the upgrade in 1981, subsequently, institutional and curricular arrangements were made to pave the way to degree conferring. From 1985, teachers colleges began to offer night and summer classes for in-service non-degreed teachers to confer baccalaureate. This change implies that all the Korean elementary and secondary school teachers are trained through four-year program at the university level, and thus their qualification is somewhat guaranteed and reasonable. Nevertheless, the public has constantly questioned the quality of teaching force (Lee, et al., 1994).

In the 1990s, the Presidential Commission on Education Reform began to work on a proposition for intensive educational reform in Korea with the perspective that achieving high quality education is at the very base of national prosperity. The Commission emphasized that policy priority should be given, in the area of teachers and teacher education, to the "revitalization of a teaching society," which will then lead to a high-quality of education (Jin, 1997).

In its fourth official report (August 20, 1996), the Commission set up several directions of teacher policy (Presidential Commission on Education Reform, 1996, pp.18-28). Followed by the direction, the Ministry of Education & Human Resources Development (the name changed from 'the Ministry of Education' since 2001) had devised more detailed policy plans and measures. Since that time, some new systems were introduced, and some other measures are in the process of implementation as follows.

The first direction focuses on reforming the teacher pre-service training system to produce high quality teachers of expertise in subject areas and a high commitment to teaching. In detail, the Commission proposed to establish a national evaluation system for teacher training institutions to promote competition among institutions. This policy seems an important direction for quality control in the arena of teachers and teaching. There are other suggestions such as supply-demand balance for secondary school teachers under the current situation of over-supply, improving poor education facilities with elementary school teacher training at teachers universities, and training programs for elementary and secondary teachers at the graduate level (Presidential Commission on Education Reform, 1996, pp.19-22).

Based on the Commission's proposal, the Ministry of Education & Human Resources Development had decided to implement a periodic evaluation system for various kinds of teacher training institutes. Accordingly, institutional evaluation system was launched in 1998 for all forty college of education nationwide. The fourth year's plan is to be implemented in 2001. In order to solve the long-lasting problem of over-supply of secondary school teachers, the size of teacher preparation through teaching certificate programs in universities had been cut to one third between 1996 and 1998(from 30% to 10% of enrollments), and the consolidation possibility of teacher pre-service training institutions was intensively researched (Pak & Kim, 1997), even though its policy alternatives are still under the discussion. Improving education facilities is in the slow progress, but training programs at the graduate level is under suspicion because six years of training will cause high opportunity cost of entering the teaching profession.

The second policy focuses on teacher selection procedure. The Commission proposed to establish a two-stage procedure for teacher selection, that is, a written examination for the first, and the utilization of various records for the second. Accordingly, the teacher selection examination has been reformed to consider comprehensive evaluation factors such as an essay test, interview, and teaching demonstration. Regardless of the change, the content validity of the examination as well as procedural fairness are often targeted by the public.

Third, the Commission emphasized diversifying teacher certification and employment status. Very innovative ideas were proposed regarding teacher certification and employment. At the implementation stage, the Ministry devised such new categories of teachers as contract teachers, circuit teachers, teachers with multiple teaching certificates, and research teachers. The intention of the contract teacher system is to utilize diverse human resources of society for the school, usually on a temporary basis. Circuit teachers are affiliated not only to an individual school but also to a board of education at the local school district. Multiple teaching certificate program was introduced in response to the need of teachers who can teach two or more subjects as small size schools have been increased especially in rural areas (Jin, 1997). In addition, training for elementary school teachers in art, music, and physical education was reinforced and those who are specialized in these areas began to be recruited or appointed to improve teaching in those subject areas. These changes are regarded as extraordinary from the Korean perspective.

Fourth, the Commission proposed the improvement of educational administrative system in order to provide specialized professional support for teachers. Major policy measures under this direction include restructuring certification and selection systems for supervisors, providing research funds and miscellaneous support for teachers, providing adequate programs for in-service teacher training, and establishing staff exchange programs between schools and teacher pre-service training institutions (Presidential Commission on Education Reform, 1996, pp. 24-26). At the implementation stage, opportunities for teacher in-service training has been increased according to "accumulated credit system" which allows accumulating credits of in-service program and to connect credits to teacher promotion and compensation. This is expected to promote teacher professionalism in a great chance, but the quality of in-service program is still suspected. It is another important reform that teachers who have distinguished themselves in both research and teaching are appointed as special research teachers for a certain period of time and financial and administrative supports are followed for them.

Fifth, the Commission recommended the improvement of teachers' welfare system, since teachers' welfare system influences attracting and retaining competent teachers. Greater emphasis has been put on the merit principle in the promotion and compensation although the merit-based compensation system failed to be implemented because of strong resistance of teaching society. At present, teachers receive special allowance for their extra work and responsibilities, but merit pay system is not applied. And, the insurance system was reinforced through expanding the functions and compensation scope of 'Compensation Fund for School Liability' (Korean Ministry of Education, 1999a).

At the moment, it is obvious that the Korean government, whether it is Presidential Commission or the Ministry of Education & Human Resources Development, plays a key role in teacher reform as well as education reform in general. Another point of recent Korean teacher reform, the issue of quality always has been the main theme even though various policy measures are adopted. Indeed, most of the reform direction and policy measures aim at quality control in pre-service training, certification, employment, and teachers' professional growth. Among them, the national evaluation program for teacher training institutes could be regarded as the most typical and direct attempt to control the quality. Thus, the national evaluation program for teacher training institutes is to be examined in detail in the following section.

Efforts toward Quality Control

According to the recommendation of the Presidential Commission on Education Reform in 1996, as mentioned earlier, the Ministry of Education & Human Resources Development launched a national evaluation program for all types of teacher training institutions nationwide, with cooperation of the Korean Educational Development Institute (Refer to the Korean Ministry of Education official document 81215-340, May 23, 1997). According the plan, beginning in 1998, every teacher training institute is required to have evaluation or accreditation by an Evaluation Commission established by the government every three to five years.

In turn, college of education (all 40 institutes nationwide) in 1998, graduate school of education (all 69 institutes) in 1999, and teachers' university (al 11 institutes) in 2000 were evaluated respectively. This year, as its fourth year project, the department of education or subject education (all 55 departments) which does not belong to the college of education is to be evaluated. The teacher certification programs operated at the numerous universities (over 100 universities) will be evaluated in 2002 according to the schedule. Thus, at the moment, the first round of evaluating teacher education institutes of this periodic and systematic evaluation program is in process (H. Kim, 1999).

Purposes and procedures of the Evaluation Program

This evaluation project is related to the reform of teacher pre-service training. In order to upgrade the quality of teacher training, the project promotes competition among institutions with the assumption that it would facilitate collective efforts of institution to improve itself. In other words, every institution is supposed to work hard to meet the evaluation standards especially because financial support and further administrative action are to be dependent on evaluation results (H. Kim, 1999).

In short, the purpose of national evaluation program for teacher training institutions is to upgrade the quality of teacher training through promoting competition among institutions. It is supposed that this purpose be accomplished by evaluating education conditions and operation of each institute reliably and objectively and making its results public.

When the evaluation procedures are considered, first, evaluation standards are set up through policy studies. Next, the evaluation handbook for self-evaluation of individual institute is created. The institution that is due for evaluation proceeds a self-evaluation based on the evaluation handbook and submits its report to the Ministry of Education & Human Resources Development. Then, the Ministry of Education & Human Resources Development creates an evaluation team which evaluates the turned written report and examines the facility and reality on site from which they determine a grade of 'Very good,' 'Good,' 'Standard,' or 'Poor.'.

This kind of examination, especially the setting forth of evaluation standards is expected to lead to higher quality training. For instance, the Ministry of education & Human Resources Development announced strong intention in terms of refining teacher education curricula to be more relevant to the practices of teaching. Specifically, emphasis was given to close connection between the contents of syllabus at the training program and the reality of elementary and secondary schools, and the subjects and methods on how to teach a certain major area. Inclusion of these elements in evaluation standard is expected to facilitate the improvement of teacher training (H. Kim, 1999).

Positive / Negative Effects

The national evaluation program for teacher training institutes is considered to present both positive and negative effects. Positive effects could be pointed out as follows. First, it was the first time that was possible to evaluate the quality of teacher training. This meaning of evaluation showed that it had aspired the evaluated institutions to compete for better evaluation scores in reforms and to try in other ways. Second, the fact that and only the fact alone that evaluation is being conducted encouraged the teachers training institutions to improve themselves. Third, the evaluation clarified future-oriented path for reforms in teacher education such as renewal of curriculum, reinforcement of connection between teacher training and actual practice at schools, and improvement of training conditions. Anyhow, the evaluation program seems to work as an important mechanism for quality control and improvement of teacher training.

However, some negative effects are noticed as follows. First, the evaluation plan could not be implemented consistently because of insufficient legal and institutional support. The postponement of the evaluation of colleges of education without rationale in 1998 caused much disorder and disbelief in the government policy. In light of this, much care should be put into keeping consistency of the policy. Second, some evaluation standards and indicators were not adequate and not expressed well. Not defining evaluation standards beforehand also added to difficulties throughout the evaluation process. The fact that prior information about the reality of teacher training institutions did not exist made this inevitable, but evaluation standards and indicators should continually be formed more effectively in the future (H. Kim, 1999).

Even on the top of the problems that the evaluation program holds, the significance of the program cannot be overlooked. Much effort was given to the development of the program under given circumstances and made partial success. And no doubt exists on systematic and periodic evaluations will result in higher quality of teacher training. The object is how to make the evaluation credible.
Focus can be made upon the evaluation results because they have the possibility to be an effective tool for reforms on all fronts of the teacher education system. It deserves attention that the evaluation results could be applied to reforms of the system. The evaluation results will be valuable in making effective and reasonable reforms in teacher training system. As shown, the teacher training evaluation and teacher training are strongly connected. In order to make possible the results use for a system reform, reliability of the results and the whole evaluation process should be guaranteed to reasonable degree.

The Ministry of Education & Human Resources Development now plans to establish the National Accreditation Center for Teacher Education Institutes in order to implement more effective and comprehensive evaluation (Kim, et al., 2000). According to the plan, the center is expected to perform evaluation or accreditation for various kinds of teacher in-service training institutes as well as pre-service training institutes. It is not sure whether and when the Ministry could possibly attain necessary funding and legal arrangement for its establishment.

3. Teacher Empowerment Efforts

Apart from the quality control efforts in the pre-service training stage, a big change had taken place in the arena of teaching profession. That is, under the influence of neo-classical perspective in economy, the teacher retirement age was cut down from 65 to 62 in 1998 exclusively initiated by the Ministry of Education & Human Resources Development. The cut-down of three years seemed to be a small business, but its impact on the teaching society actually looked like an atomic bomb (Pak, 2000). Unlike the government's expectation, the exclusion of old teachers from the teaching society was regarded as social denial for the competitiveness of total teaching force. Teachers were extremely embarrassed because they thought the government and the public treated them as an obstacle for education reform. In fact, teachers became very uncooperative in pursuing education reform initiated by the Commission and the Ministry of Education & Human Resources Development, and this situation resulted in education reform and teacher reform infeasible.

Now, how to activate teaching society and to boost of morale in the profession had become the number one issue in education reform. In the beginning of 2000, the Ministry of Education & Human Resources Development proposed a Strategy Agenda for the Advancement of Teaching Professions (draft). The agenda comprehends most of issues and alternatives that has been addressed and proposed by the professional society in the arena. But it focuses on teacher empowerment through the improvement of professionalism. And, of course, the agenda assumes that teachers should play a key role in education reform.

The plan includes various aspects of improving teacher professionalism such as certification, initial training, in-service training, promotion, appraisal, working conditions, and welfare systems, and so forth. It was supposed to be ratified to a final plan by September 2000 after pubic and expert hearings, policy studies by each agenda. However, its ratification has not been accomplished yet due to difficulties in funding and strong opposition by some interest groups. Therefore, at this point, those agendas seem to be very focus of the teaching and professional society. Some of the 10 core agendas are as following (Korean Ministry of Education, 1999c).

(a) The strategy agenda introduces a new certification system to reinforce more close relationship between preschool, elementary, and secondary level education. Certification is to be classified into several new categories such as certificate for preschool to second grade teaching, certificate for home-room teacher for third to sixth grade teaching, and certificate for subject teaching of fifth to tenth grade. Its purpose is to let teaching force prepare for the seventh national curriculum era which began from the year 2000, which emphasizes the close connection between schools at different stages.

(b) The agenda proposes the implementation of teacher licensing system that attracts other workforce outside of teaching profession into teaching. According to the proposal, competent workforce outside teaching can be employed at schools after getting teaching certificate via screening procedures and in-service training as regulated. The subject areas covered by these new recruits are supposed to be those areas in which sufficient numbers of teacher are not trained. Its examples include computer education, extra-curricular activities, English at the elementary school. Dropping of the age limit in employment is a related component of the policy. This proposal intends to improve the quality of teaching force by diversifying recruits' background.

(c) The agenda proposes substantial increase of teacher salary level and welfare. For instance, remuneration for the responsibility of homeroom teacher is to be increased from 80,000won per month ($ 53) in 2001 to 200,000 won ($ 133) by 2005. Apartments for teachers, relaxing spaces and facilities in the school building are to be gradually arranged as an annual base. Comprehensive credit card designed for teacher's special needs is also proposed to provide discounts for teachers using public facilities.

(d) The agenda calls reforms of teacher recruitment and placement policies. Propositions are to increase 2,000 teachers each year for five years for insuring a total of 10,000 teachers until year 2004. The agenda also proposes reforms of teaching force placement policies, and increasing the number of elementary subject teachers to levels designated by law. This policy aims to improve working conditions of teachers such as class size and teaching hours.

Even though the Korean education society and the government work for this new trial, pro and cons exist for the policy directions and measures. In addition, such barriers as financing and legal arrangement are remaining (Suh, 2000). Because new efforts are in the process of a developing final version, it is not possible yet to examine their effects and problems. It may be safe to say that the initiative is expected to affect teacher professionalism somewhat positively but its effects are to be limited.

Discussions

As explained, various enthusiastic efforts and policy initiatives to reform teachers and teaching have been continued in Korea since the 1980s. Its direction, as observed through two good examples in the previous sections, is quality control at the one hand and teacher empowerment at the other hand. In any case, it is noteworthy that the government has initiated teacher reform as well as education reform in general. In other words, key players in the reform are some elite officers of the ministry. University professors and experts of research institutes in the field played cooperative roles.

This is related with the Korean teacher education system that the government plays a critical role in pre-service training, certification, and teacher selection. The Korean teacher education system is designed and closely controlled by the government. In other words, the Ministry of Education & Human Resources Development and the sixteen boards of education in each geographic region are responsible for the teacher supply and demand. Teacher training is both prescriptive and standardized, and can only be attained at specialized and accredited institutes. Further, the government determines the entrants' quota of every institute at an annual base, and evaluates curriculum and management of all institutes.

This kind of system was established with the assumption that the government is responsible for the provision and quality of compulsory and secondary education because they are operated mainly with the public funds. However, the underlying reason may be that the government has a vested interest in education, which is important to political stability and economic growth. In turn, most efforts to improve teacher education and professionalism in Korea have been initiated by the government.

Even though many innovative policy measures are in the process of implementation according to the recommendations of the Presidential Commission since 1996, when teachers and the teaching profession are concerned, doubts still remain. In detail, numerous long-term problems and issues are still persisting.

Problems in Attracting High-quality Teacher Candidates

The quality of teacher candidates has fallen significantly, since many bright young people are now being lured into other occupations and new industries. For instance, before 1994, the average academic competence of teachers college entrants was higher than that of most other university and college majors. However, the average score on the Scholastic Aptitude Test for teachers college entrants has become lower than that for other majors. Problems in teacher remuneration and working conditions and poor conditions of teacher training institutions seem to hinder quality control in teacher training. Considering the importance of this issue, teachers' organizations and politicians proposed an establishment of a special law to upgrade teacher compensation and working conditions, but they failed to pass the law (Choi, et al., 1997).

The rapid growth of the female teacher population appears to affect negatively to attract and retain high quality teachers because the tendency would result in de-evaluation of the socio-economic status of teaching profession. As being observed in many developing and industrialized countries, approximately 62.7 percent of the elementary school teachers and some 72.8 percent of the students at teachers college in Korea are female in 1999(Statistical Yearbook of Education, 1999). Furthermore, these percentages are consistently growing.

Therefore, attracting high quality male candidates into teaching seems to be a policy priority at this point. Scholarships and a waiver system for military service could be considered for this purpose (Choi, et al., 1997). In fact, the Korean Ministry of Education, through "the Strategy Agenda for the Advancement of Teaching Profession (draft)" originally included a waiver system for military service (Korean Ministry of Education, 1999c), but now seems to give up that agenda in the final version because of strong opposition form other fields. In the near future, teacher training policy will also have to focus on attracting bright female candidates, who may also choose to follow more prosperous career in the field previously closed to women.

Failure of Quality Control in Teacher Certification and Recruitment

All graduates from teacher training institutions are required to possess certification by the Ministry of Education by law in Korea. This process ensures that teachers are adequately qualified, and it also instills teaching with a sense of commitment and professionalism. However, the teaching certificate is conferred without additional testing. That is, elementary and secondary school teacher candidates who graduate from an accredited institution are certified without an examination.

In Korea, certification does not necessarily mean employment. Currently, prospective teachers are recruited to public schools through open competitions, which include teacher selection examinations. The boards of education in each geographic area hold the examination once a year. This employment test is composed of a preliminary written test on pedagogy (30%) and the major field (70%), and final test of presentation and interview. The problem is that neither the preliminary written or final test does necessarily guarantee the selection of high quality candidates. Validity and reliability of the written test have been questioned, and there is little variation in the results of final oral test.

Imbalance between Teacher Supply and Demand

Depending on, so called, the closed (elementary) or open (secondary) system of teacher training, the possibility to pass the teacher selection examination is very high at the elementary teaching level (around 80 - 95%), but very low at the secondary teaching level (around 20%) (Korean Ministry of Education, 1998, 1999b). This indicates that there has been a balance at the elementary level but an over-supply at the secondary level. Supply-demand balance is possible because the government controls the number of teachers' university enrollments depending on the number of employment expectation. On the other hand, excessive over-supply of secondary school teaching certificate holders exists because five times more teacher candidates are produced through different types of training programs (Choi, et al., 1997; H. Kim, 1999).

This long-persistent situation was suddenly changed in 1998 because of the policy of lowering teachers' retirement age from 65 to 62 and activating early retirement system. Many aged teachers who disappointed with the teacher policies chose to retire early. The simultaneous retirement of teachers of age between 62 and 65 and the early retirement rush resulted in the teacher shortage. The situation was more serious at the elementary schools. In 1998, 3.5%(4,871 out of 140,121) of elementary school teachers and 1.6%(3,136 out of 201,961) of secondary school teachers left the teaching profession. In 1999, 11.5% and 4.6%, respectively, left the teaching profession (Korean Ministry of Education, 1999b; Statistical Yearbook of Education, 1999).

In order to fulfill the vacancies, teacher selection examination were executed five times in 1999. Despite the increased number of teacher selection examination, 8,073 elementary school teacher vacancies could not be fulfilled. In the case of secondary school teachers, meeting new demands does not seem hard because of the huge pool of teaching force, but the supply of elementary school teachers is problematic since the pool itself is not large enough to meet demand due to the closed training system. The imbalance situation between teacher supply and demand is anticipated for several years more.

Issue on Socio-economic Status and Working Conditions of Teachers

The socio-economic status (SES) of Korean teachers is considered to be low when compared to that of college professors or other professionals. As of 1998, the annual salary level for teachers was between US$ 10,242($19,630) and US$ 29,291($56,000) (MOE Internal Data, Nov.1998, the number is various depending on the exchange rate). A teacher's salary and benefits are comparable to those of most public employees, but are lower than employees in industries. Despite a long tradition of Confucianism, which holds teachers in high respect, social attitudes about teachers are deteriorating. In fact, most Korean teachers perceive that the SES of teachers is lower than that of other professionals.

In terms of working conditions, the burden on teachers is very high. In 1998, the average class size was 34.9 at the elementary school level, 40.8 at the middle school level, and 48.2 at the high school level (Education Statistics in Brief, 1998). In addition to their teaching duties, teachers must spend many hours on additional administrative work. The lack of specialized administrative support may even force teachers to be involved in extra, miscellaneous work. And, their offices are not well furnished. Most teachers believe that they are not adequately compensated in terms of remuneration and working conditions, which then results in low teacher morale. That is, the low socio-economic status accorded to teachers influences teacher morale negatively, and may result in failing to attract bright young people to teaching (Choi, et al., 1997).

Teacher Un-preparedness in Response to the 7th National Curriculum

National curricula of elementary and secondary schools have been revised on a periodic bases to reflect the emerging needs of a changing society and the new frontiers of disciplines in Korea. Since the Republic of Korea was established in 1948, there have been seven revisions of the curriculum (Korean Ministry of Education, 1999a). From the year 2000, the 7th National Curriculum period launches. This 7th Curriculum is regarded as quite different one compared to the former systems. With strong recommendation from the Presidential Commission on Education Reform, the 7th Curriculum emphasizes learning by individual academic capability. Besides, after 10 years of learning from the Grade 1 of elementary school to Grade 1 of high school (Grade 10), which is called as 'Basic Common Education,' every student is supposed to learn two more years (Grade 11-12) through more individualized and advanced program.

The problem is that teachers are not quite ready for the 7th Curriculum period. Regardless of in-service training, most teachers seem not to be prepared for teaching students on the basis of their capabilities. Current teacher certification and classification systems do not appear to be adequate any more in the era of the 7th Curriculum period. There are voices insisting on reforming the system of teacher training and certification itself (Kim, et al., 1994; Park & Ko, 1998; Park, et al., 1999). However, debates on the way of reforming the system are being continued, yet the decision could not be made.

Because previous and current efforts made in Korea have been very intensive and nationwide, it might be an example of national trials to reform teachers and the teaching profession. The reform direction of quality control and teacher empowerment seems to be quite reasonable. However, their purposes do not seem to be accomplished. Yet, it seems to be on-going and very complicated business.

The major problem, at this point, is that no feasible difference has been made. In spite of the fourth official report of the Presidential Commission in 1996 and the subsequent national evaluation program for teacher training institutes, the quality of teacher education which teacher training institutes possibly offer is doubted from the field experts and the public (Choi, et al., 1997; H. Kim, 1999). That is, competitiveness of teacher training institutes is still under the suspicion. A Strategy Agenda for the Advancement of Teaching Professions (draft) which focuses on teacher empowerment is another efforts to reform teaching. The existence of continuing trial only after several years means that the government and the education society are not satisfied with the change. Further, the possibility for the agenda to be actualized does not seem to be high, as seen in the delay of its finalization through consensus among political parties and interest groups.

The reason for these persisting problems seems to be twofold. One is that reform itself is always not easy and takes time. The other is that most efforts and polices are initiated by the government, as discussed earlier. Constituents of the teaching society were sometimes resistant for the top-down policies because some of the policies required hard working, abolished their vested opportunity, or did not seem quite reasonable for their situation. The critical reason for teachers' resistance is that the government officers who designed the reform and consider themselves as elite people and reformers have treated the group of teachers as obstacle of education reform. In a word, reform initiators failed to obtain partnership with teachers. There is no doubt that the conflict between reform initiators and teachers make reform succeed hard. Therefore, making related peoples rather active in the process of reform seems to be the most important task at this point.

The lesson from the Korean experience is that efforts and initiatives led by the government always have yield limitations in accomplishing expected purposes. In particular, it is noteworthy that teacher reform as well as education reform cannot be succeeded without teachers' voluntary cooperation. In fact, teachers' voluntary participation and willingness to reform are hardly expected. However, education reform can never be accomplished without it. Balance between voluntary participation and planned push from initiators, or balance between top-down and bottom-up reform must be important task. This Korean experience is supposed to provide implications and lessons to other countries that are in the similar situations.

R E F E R E N C E S

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Seoul, Korea.

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CURRICULUM VITAE

Name: Dr. Hye - Sook Kim

Education Background: Ph.D. in Educational Administration
University of Utah, U.S.A.

Present Position:

- Research Fellow, Korean Educational
Development Institute
a) former director of College Evaluation
Team, Teacher Studies Division
b) Lecturer, Yonsei University & Seoul Women's University, SEOUL, KOREA

Work Experiences:

Sept.1991-June1992 - Graduate Research Fellow, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, U.S.A.
Sept.1988-June1991 - Teaching Assistant, Dept. of Education Administration University of Utah, Salt Lake City, U.S.A.
Sept.1984-May1987 - Visiting Lecturer, MARA Institute of Technology, Kuala Lumpur, MALAYSIA
Apr.1982-May1985 - Researcher, Korean Educational
Development Institute (KEDI), SEOUL, KOREA

Books & Articles Published (Selected):

Hye-Sook Kim. Et, al. (2000). A Study on the Restructuring Teacher Career Ladder and Certification System in Korea, SEUL,
KEDI.

Hye-Sook Kim, et, al. (2000). A Study on the Establishment and Operational Strategy of National Accreditation Center for Teacher Education Institutes, SEOUL. KEKI.

Hye-Sook Kim, et, al. (1999). Standards and Procedures of Evaluation for Teachers Colleges,