Comparative Education

ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cced20

Happiness education and the Free Year Program in

South Korea

Sung won Kim & Lois Y. Kim

To cite this article: Sung won Kim & Lois Y. Kim (2020): Happiness education and the Free Year
Program in South Korea, Comparative Education, DOI: 10.1080/03050068.2020.1812233

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/03050068.2020.1812233

Published online: 28 Aug 2020.

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COMPARATIVE EDUCATION
https://doi.org/10.1080/03050068.2020.1812233

Happiness education and the Free Year Program in South

Korea
Sung won Kim and Lois Y. Kim
Department of Education, Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
Despite the widespread education reform discourses attempting to Educational transfer/
alleviate high-stakes examination pressure and narrowly test-driven borrowing; South Korea;
education systems in East Asia, none have been as systematic and education policy; education
quality; development;
drastic as the Free Year Program (FYP) recently implemented in
globalisation; neoliberalism
South Korea. The FYP provides middle school students with a
year-long reprieve from examinations during which they can 关键词
pursue other activities outside of the rigid test-oriented 教育转移/借鉴; 韩国; 教育
curriculum, exploring their career paths, free from the pressures of 政策; 教育质量; 发展; 全球
taking the midterm and final exams. In this article, we explore the 化; 新自由主义
contradictions raised by the discourse promoting the FYP within
the broader national ‘Happiness Education’ framework. The FYP
frequently references foreign cases, and articulates a national
imaginary caught in between multiple competing agendas: the
cultivation of a modern neoliberal subject in pursuit of their own
happiness versus a collective nationalistic agenda in pursuit of
global competitiveness, and multiple competing Western-inspired
and domestic education discourses.

韩国的幸福教育与“自由学年计划”
摘要
尽管东亚地区普遍存在试图缓解高赌注的考试压力和狭隘的应试
教育制度的教育改革论调，但没有一个像韩国近期实施的“自由
学年计划”（FYP）那样的系统和彻底。该计划为中学生提供了为
期一年的免考期，在此期间，他们可以在僵化的应试课程之外从
事其他活动，探索自己的职业发展道路，摆脱参加期中和期末考
试的压力。在本文中，我们探讨了在国家‘幸福教育’的框架下推
广“自由学年计划”的话语所引发的矛盾。该计划经常引用国外案
例，并阐述了一个夹在多重竞争议程之间的国家想象：培养一个
追求自身幸福的现代新自由主义的主体，还是追求全球竞争力的
集体民族主义议程，以及多种相互竞争的受西方启发的和国内的
教育话语。

Introduction
East Asian education systems have been criticised for being narrowly examination-
focused, conservative and top-down, stifling creativity and critical thinking skills. East

CONTACT Sung won Kim sungwkim@yonsei.ac.kr Department of Education, Yonsei University, 50 Yonsei-ro
Seodaemun-gu 03722, Seoul, South Korea
This article was originally published with errors, which have now been corrected in the online version. Please see Correction
(http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03050068.2020.1819727)
© 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 S. W. KIM AND L. Y. KIM

Asian nations such as Japan, Singapore, China, Korea, Taiwan, etc. have largely recognised
these limitations and embarked on radical curriculum and pedagogical reforms over the
last two decades to reduce exam stress and foster creativity and initiative-taking (Deng,
Gopinathan, and Lee 2013; Law 2014). Despite the widespread education reform dis-
courses attempting to alleviate high-stakes examination pressure and narrowly test-
driven education systems in East Asia, none have been as systematic and drastic as the
Free Year Program (FYP)1 recently implemented in South Korea.2 The Free Year Program
started out as the Free Semester Program, which set out to provide middle school students
with a semester-long reprieve from examinations during which students can pursue
various activities (e.g. career search, arts and sports, and club activities) outside of the
rigid test-oriented curriculum to explore their career paths, free from the pressures of
taking the midterm and final exams. Since March 14, 2018, the programme has been
optionally extended to a full year, becoming the Free Year Program (FYP).3 The full-
blown implementation of the programme has been exceptional in light of the entrenched
test-driven curriculum in Korea, where middle school students are already preparing for
competitive college entrance exams. In the past, there have been several comparable
policy efforts in reaction to the high examination pressure and narrowly test-oriented cur-
riculum in Korea such as the ‘Free Study Day’ (1972) which was implemented in elemen-
tary schools one day per week for a set number of hours for six years, or the ‘No Backpack
Day’ (1995) implemented twice a month in elementary schools for several years, but their
scope and impact have been by far very limited. The Free Year Program is the first wide-
reaching national programme implemented in middle school for a full year.
The FYP comes at a time where the global reform discourse is dominated by high-stakes
testing and accountability. The impact of international assessments such as the Pro-
gramme for international Student Assessment (PISA) has been in particular widespread
with a large and increasing number of participating countries (79 countries in 2018)
focused on 15 year olds. PISA provides key benchmarks for student achievement in lit-
eracy, mathematics, and science, and has been closely tied to a nation’s competitiveness
in the global knowledge economy. The reports published by the Organisation for Econ-
omic Cooperation and Development (OECD) promote the practices of the highest-
scoring countries, attempting to locate ‘international best practice’ and ‘world-class’ edu-
cation – an approach that has been criticised by comparative scholars (Auld and Morris
2013; Forestier and Crossley 2015). PISA has thus established a new mode of ‘global edu-
cation governance’ by shaping the key debates and policy-making across the globe (Grek
2009; Sellar and Lingard 2013).
In a world where high-stakes testing and accountability dominate the global reform dis-
course movement, the Free Year Program seems to move in the opposite direction, criti-
cising the test-driven curriculum, and proposing to move towards a stress-free school
environment. However, we argue that the FYP is actually heavily shaped by and
engages with global educational discourse as the Korean government strives to cultivate
modern citizens, which are key to the country’s global competitiveness. In this article, we
explore the ways in which the discourse surrounding the justification and implementation
of the FYP engages with globalisation in the context of Korea’s struggle to establish itself
as a newly ‘developed’ country. The case of Korea is particularly interesting because of its
recent history of transition from developing to developed country status, having become
the 24th member to join the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) in the OECD in
 COMPARATIVE EDUCATION 3

2010, and being the first former aid recipient to now become a donor country providing
official development assistance (ODA) to other impoverished developing nations.
This article first explores the frequent references made to foreign cases similar to the
FYP. How are these foreign cases referenced, and what purpose do they serve? Compara-
tive scholarship focuses on the symbolic value and selective nature of educational borrow-
ing and referencing (Auld and Morris 2013; Phillips and Ochs 2004; Steiner-Khamsi 2014;
Waldow, Takayama, and Sung 2014). In this article, we explore the ways in which official
documents regarding the implementation of the FYP in Korea reference foreign
sources, and how the global educational discourse plays into the domestic narrative to
justify the implementation of such drastic policy as the FYP. In particular, the scholarship
on borrowing does not explore how referencing contributes to national discourses in the
articulation of a national imaginary for those recently developed countries caught in
between a neoliberal rhetoric and state-driven education reform agenda such as Korea,
which we set out to do in our study.
In order to better understand the broader setting against which the logic of the FYP is
articulated, we next examine the overarching governing national framework of ‘Happiness
Education’. The FYP is the most central and controversial key policy launched under the
slogan ‘Happy Education for all, creative talent shapes the future’ under the Ministry of
Education’s (MoE) 2014 Major Education Plan. On the one hand, ‘Happiness Education’
in Korea promotes a more holistic educational approach aligned with educational
approaches promoted in Western settings in an attempt to modernise (e.g. Jeynes
2008; Sahlberg 2011; Yoon and Järvinen 2016). This aligns with the national development
strategies of countries such as Japan, Bhutan, Singapore, and Vanuatu that have taken
steps to incorporate happiness as a national goal of their development and education pol-
icies (UNESCO 2016). Korean President Park’s 2012 ‘Happy Citizens’ campaign echoes
these themes tied to national development and economic prosperity. Thus, Happiness
Education draws heavily from global discourses adapted to local needs and desires.
We further argue that the central theme of ‘Happiness Education’ ties disparate ideas
with seeming coherence, but is fraught with contradictions. For instance, the rationale
for the implementation of the FYP revolves around nation-building and competitiveness,
which seems contradictory to the original intent of giving more freedom and happiness to
students. Furthermore, the politics of happiness raises the thorny issue of whose respon-
sibility it is to become happy citizens through learning. Here, the ‘perfect neoliberal
subject’ becomes central to our understanding of the modernisation the Korean govern-
ment hopes to achieve. Interpretations of Foucault’s governmentality by Dean (1999),
Hindess (1996), Rose (1996) and others emphasise the role of the state in producing indi-
viduals that a liberal society needs through ‘neoliberal governance’ central to neoliberal
culture blending economic and political (neo)liberalism (Kipnis 2007). Neoliberal govern-
mentality is cornerstone to modernity and is thought to originate in Western forms of gov-
ernment (Dean 1999). The ideal neoliberal citizen/subject is entrepreneurial, autonomous,
responsible, and governable (Kipnis 2007, 2011). Neoliberal ideals are expressed in political
discourses to create neoliberal subjectivities, but neoliberal discourse can sometimes mask
gross inequalities or the ends to which politicians and social actors make use of such dis-
courses (Yang 2013; Zhang 2012). In this article, we are focused not on the actual pro-
duction of neoliberal subjects per se, but the contradictions arising in the discourses
4 S. W. KIM AND L. Y. KIM

and educational rhetoric and practice of ‘Happiness Education’ to which Korean citizens
are subjected.
In this article, we lastly draw tentative parallels between China’s ‘quality education’
(suzhi jiaoyu 素質教育) discourse and the ‘Happiness Education’ movement in Korea as
a mode of governance. China’s national quality education discourse has been the
subject of a large body of work and rose to prominence during the reform era (Dello-
Iacovo 2009; Kipnis 2006). The term has taken on multi-faceted meanings in China’s
quest for modernity, civility, and national advancement, and also centres on constructing
the image of the ideal citizen embodying qualities that can be acquired through holistic
forms of education rejecting the test-driven curriculum. We hope to illustrate through
this comparison how regional interpretations of a global rhetoric in the quest for modern-
isation can converge. The case of the FYP in particular allows us to explore the role of the
national imaginary in the articulation of a localised global discourse, which has been
muted from discussions of educational borrowing and the global reform movement up
to date.

Materials and methods

We draw on relevant documents that were published between 2013 and 2017 when the
FYP was implemented, including official documents produced by the Ministry of Education
and government-affiliated research organisations, online publications, and other publi-
cations such as magazines that provide information and opinions of educational leaders
on current issues. Our main goal was to understand how policy-makers justified the
implementation of the FYP and the official rhetoric and logic behind the FYP reflecting
the state discourse. Thus, we focused on governmental reports and publications written
by individuals affiliated with governmental organisations. We excluded sources that
were written by non-government representatives in popular journals, for instance. We
limited our scope to articles or reports where authors were either researchers from govern-
ment-affiliated research organisations or were involved in the FYP at the national policy
level, such as an official working at the Ministry of Education or committee member in
charge of planning the FYP. Contributing authors came from a variety of backgrounds
such as the ministry of education, research organisations, universities, and regional edu-
cation offices.
Our main sources were the two key official documents both published by the Ministry
of Education outlining a proposal for implementing the FYP. The first was published in May
28, 2013, titled ‘Management Plan for piloting the Free Semester Policy in Middle Schools
to realise Happiness Education by supporting Students’ Dreams and Talents’ designed for
the pilot schools and the second was published almost two years later in 2015 titled ‘Man-
agement Plan for implementing FSP in Middle Schools to realise Happiness Education by
developing Students’ Dreams and Talents’ for scaling up and nation-wide implementation.
These documents present overlapping ideas and reflect the core tenets of the FYP. We
used these main documents to locate key themes, before delving into other sources.
Next, we identified eight government-affiliated organisations listed under the ‘Edu-
cation Policy Network’, a cooperative organisation that facilitates research collaboration
and information sharing among the Ministry of Education, district level offices, and
related organisations. We searched their websites for available magazines, reports, and
 COMPARATIVE EDUCATION 5

other relevant documents. Among these, four organisations extensively covered the Free
Year Program and published significant amounts of relevant documents including discus-
sions about the FYP: Korean Educational Development Institute (KEDI), Korea Research
Institute for Vocational Education and Training (KRIVET), and Korea Institute of Curriculum
and Evaluation (KICE), and National Youth Policy Institute (NYPI). We focused our search on
the websites of these organisations and included them in our analysis (see Appendix A for
a list of the documents used).

Cross-referencing international cases

The most notable feature of the FYP official discourse is its frequent references to foreign
cases to justify its implementation. We explore how these references are largely symbolic
of the advanced developed world Korea strives to ‘catch up with’, portrayed as a mono-
lithic Western ‘imaginary’ or ‘paradise’ sharply contrasting with the failures of Korea’s dom-
estic education system.
Foreign cases such as the Transition Year, Gap year, Efterskole, PRAO, or Career Start
Week that were comparable to the Free Year Program in Korea were frequently cited in
policy documents to justify and legitimize the implementation of the FYP. We summarised
the most frequently cited foreign cases (Ireland, England, Denmark, Sweden, and Japan) in
Table 1.
Transition Year (TY) in Ireland is one of the most frequently mentioned foreign pro-
grammes. TY was designed to alleviate the highly stressful academic environment just
as the FYP. However, unlike the FYP, TY was not implemented systematically as part of
a nation-wide project; even though the government’s subsidy in the mid-1990s contribu-
ted to the mainstreaming of the programme, schools had the choice to implement the
programme uniformly or to make it optional to the students (Jeffers 2011). The largely
voluntary nature of the participation in such programmes at the school and student-
level is notable in other referenced programmes. In particular, the UK Gap Year is very
flexible as it is an optional year British students (often upper-middle-class) take off
before entering college, during which they organise their own activities – it is not a nation-
ally organised programme or policy, but rather a historically emerged phenomenon (Jones
2004). Denmark’s Efterskole was also not part of a government-led programme but
emerged from grassroots activities led by parents and local leaders who distrusted the
government in charge of designing the educational curriculum (Chung 2016). As a
result, the curriculum served as a venue to reflect public concerns and opinions, which
was also financially supported by the state. As for Japan and Sweden, their programmes
are solely focused on career development. These two programmes are short (one or mul-
tiple weeks) but more intensively and systematically organised compared to the FYP. For
example, students are provided support for selecting their job-sites and experience
working at the job site.
The above programmes were most frequently cited as models for Korea, but a careful
examination reveals that these programmes are in many ways fundamentally different
from Korea’s FYP. First, the FYP takes a top-down approach. All Korean students are
required to take the programme, and it is not a largely student-driven or local-initiated
programme such as the Gap Year or the Efterskole, although schools have autonomy in
designing the FYP curriculum and the Metropolitan and Provincial Offices of Education
6 S. W. KIM AND L. Y. KIM

Table 1. Foreign reference cases.

Mandatory/
Program (Country) Length Age/Grade Optional Focus/description Additional information
Transition Year 1 year Mostly 15- Optional or Increasing social Introduced in 1974;
(Ireland) 16 year mandatory awareness and social Financial incentives and
old depending on competence with peer support offered by
school’s policy ‘education through the government in the
experience of adult mid-1990’s contributed
and working life’; to mainstreaming of the
Extensive autonomy program
for curriculum design;
Active teaching and
learning methods
encouraged; No
formal public exam
attached.
Gap Year (U.K.) 3 to 24 months Usually Optional at Tour, learning, work Private companies are
before individual experience, and involved; The program
college, level voluntary work within stems from the ‘grand
but from or outside of the U.K. tour’ of the upper class
15 years students which was
old popular in 17-19C.
Efterskole (Denmark) 1∼3 year 14-18 years Optional at Enlightment for life, The first Efterskole was
old individual general education, founded in 1851; The
level and democratic first government act
citizenship; concerning Efterskoles
Independent and passed in 1930;
residential program Municipal governments
are entitled to financial
support for students
taking the program;
Parents have the
opportunity to establish
Efterskole to reflect
particular views.
PRAO (Sweden) At least 10 days 14-15 years Mandatory Gaining insights and Principals are in charge of
old experiences of organizing Prao for
(Grade 8- working life and students; Career
9) industries; Students guidance counsellors
choose work site of provide necessary
their interest and information and
carry out simple task supervisors from work
places organize and
design the contents;
Schools are allowed to
offer the program in
previous grades
additionally
Career Start Week 1∼5 days 13 years Optional at Career education and Modeled after programs
(Japan) old school level, development of started in city of Hyogo
(Grade 8) but most character and skills; and Toyama from 1990s
schools run Students report to which reflected
career the worksites directly increased social concern
experience during this period; for the young
programs Students or the generation having hard
teachers find the sites time to adapt to
working life.
The chart summarizes information from the followings: Transition Year (Ireland, Department of Education 1993; Jeffers
2011); Gap Year (Jones 2004; Kim et al. 2017); Efterskole (Efterskolerne 2019a, 2019b; Jensen 2015; Song 2010); PRAO
(European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training 2010; Swedish National Agency for Education 2019a,
2019b); Career Start Week (Seo, Kim, and Ko 2011; Seo 2015; Fujita et al. 2017).
 COMPARATIVE EDUCATION 7

and schools are encouraged to propose programmes and ideas that can be integrated into
the FYP curriculum. Secondly, the FYP offers career orientation sessions (e.g. invited talks,
career aptitude tests) and schools may organise job-site visiting activities in big groups,
but the FYP does not offer systematic hands-on career experience or support for individual
selection of job sites and job training which is left to the students, contrary to programmes
in Japan or Sweden. Thus, career experience, autonomy, and student-driven activities are
not as integrated into the FYP as in the case of the reference countries.
We note that foreign cases deemed to be comparable to the FYP are featured fre-
quently and at the top of the first page of each official document under the ‘Background
to the policy’ section, flagging their importance. Foreign cases take on a symbolic value
embodying the superior practices of the ‘developed world’ which Korea should follow.
The distancing between Korea and the ‘developed world’ is interesting in light of the
fact that Korea is technically already classified as an OECD nation and high-income devel-
oped country – the FYP discourse suggests that the ‘developed world’ mentioned here are
the countries that are considered to be more economically established and advanced than
Korea with superior educational practices. In MoE’s 2013 document, the first line of the first
page states: ‘Recently, the trend in developed countries is to provide opportunities for
adolescents to explore their career paths according to their dreams and talent while
also adjusting to the new learning environment’. Next, the cases of Ireland, Denmark,
and Sweden are introduced. The next line of the document outlines OECD’s Definition
and Selection of Competencies (DeSeCo) project: ‘Also, developed countries emphasize
core skills to adapt flexibly in the future instead of noncritical acceptance and memoriza-
tion of knowledge’. Despite the constant references to the educational practices of specific
developed countries that feature as model cases, very few details beyond basic descrip-
tions of the foreign programmes are provided when they are referenced in FYP docu-
ments, and there is no detailed analysis about the key goals of the programmes
mentioned or any reference to the social, economic, historic, political or cultural context
in which these programmes were implemented. The foreign cases cited are thus decon-
textualised, stripped of their original meaning, and are only featured as model cases to
justify the implementation of the FYP.
This suggests that the borrowing patterns found in the FYP discourse is not only
about cherry-picking specific foreign practices or using foreign models as a façade to
legitimate preferred domestic policy options, as found in the U.K. or Hong Kong
(Morris 2012). The references serve as symbolic justifications for the existence of the
FYP with the understanding that Korea has much catching up to do to belong to the
‘developed’ world. Against this background, one salient characteristic of the usage of
foreign cases in the context of FYP is the creation of a Western ‘imaginary’ or ‘paradise’
where children are problem-free and happy, embodying the twenty-first Century values
of the more developed world. The countries covered (e.g. Ireland, England, Denmark,
Sweden, and Japan) are diverse, contrary to the borrowing patterns we find in other
studies, where the focus is on one region or single country. Despite the diversity of
countries represented, the foreign cases are presented as one monolithic entity that
stands for everything Korea is not, and symbolises the modernity Korean government
strives to achieve. In other words, foreign practices are presented as an anti-thesis to
the current Korean system and provides a reference point. The foreign is idealised
and presented as a stable entity against the insecurities and anxieties of the Korean
8 S. W. KIM AND L. Y. KIM

system. The FYP narrative illustrates the extent to which citing the practices of devel-
oped countries strikes a popular nerve reflecting the Korean desire to become part of
the developed world.
This is evident when examining the language used to justify the implementation of the
FYP and what it promises to accomplish. The frequent references to international cases are
accompanied by a deficit language used to highlight the failures of the current education
system the FYP seeks to redress. The FYP proposes to ‘free’ students from the deficiencies
of the current system: lacking in school life satisfaction (interest, happiness, confidence),
lacking in career readiness (future hope, opportunity to explore, reflect, and contemplate,
connection between learning and life, development of skills), lacking in free time (due to
pressure from exams, entrance exam-oriented learning, excessive study hours, answer-
oriented cramming), and lacking in student-centeredness (student-centered education,
respecting individual aptitude and skills, diversity).
The FYP discourse thus taps into a familiar deficit narrative to justify cross-referencing
outside sources of reference. The language used throughout the documents takes the
deficit theme a step further and calls for immediate action to resolve what is now
framed as a serious education crisis: ‘We have reached the point where we must search
for a breakthrough solution’ (MoE 2013). The FYP repeatedly emphasises the ‘normaliza-
tion of education’ (returning the current abnormal crisis situation to a ‘normal’ one) as a
key frame. The FYP thus ties disparate policies inspired from disparate sources and
emerges as an anti-thesis to the current system and a panacea to all educational ills
rather than a coherent plan of action. ‘Happiness Education’ crystallizes this idea, appeal-
ing to the popular imagination, as we will outline in the next section.

The free year program and ‘happiness education’

‘Happiness education’ as a national development strategy
‘Happiness education’ as a less test-driven holistic education system more in line
with the practices of Western countries
The first issue is related to the high levels of unhappiness in Korea stemming from the
overly competitive and exam-oriented education system also referred to as ‘exam hell’.
Multiple studies repeatedly found lower levels of student well-being and satisfaction in
East Asia due to pressure to excel academically and bullying (Kwon, Kristjánsson, and
Walker 2017; So and Kang 2014; Yoon and Järvinen 2016). This was particularly severe
in Korea. The 2014 results from the Bang Junghwan Foundation ranked Korea the
lowest in levels of happiness and well-being of students among the 23 OECD countries
(Yeom et al. 2014). The 2012 PISA results also suggest that Korean 15-year-olds are
among the least happy of all participating countries (OECD 2014). According to the
National Statistical Office (NSO) and Ministry of Gender Equity and Family (MGEF)
(2013), 39.2% of teenagers in South Korea pointed out ‘academic stress’ and ‘discord
within families’ as major causes of suicidal impulses. The NSO (2018) reported 254 suicides
among teenagers in 2017, and suicide has been the number one reason for death among
the youth (ages 9–24) since 2007 (NSO and MGEF 2018).
Overall, there is acute awareness with regards the high levels of unhappiness of a per-
formance-focused system in Korea: ‘ … There is something unique and deeply disturbing
 COMPARATIVE EDUCATION 9

about institutionalized violence in South Korean schools and the abysmally low subjective
well-being levels of pupils are no coincidence’ (Kwon, Kristjánsson, and Walker 2017, 214).
Korea’s ‘hellish education system’ has been frequently contrasted with images of an ideal
and utopian education provided in Western countries such as Finland, which is often
selected as a reference point rather than East Asian countries because they are perceived
to conform with global norms and values (Yoon and Järvinen 2016). In Finland, schooling is
viewed as a comprehensive institution shaping students’ experience beyond academics;
quality of school life (QSL) and school satisfaction of students (sense of belonging, relation-
ships, learning to cope with academic pressure and competition, and bullying) are all part
of the whole-school experience (Yoon and Järvinen 2016). ‘Happiness Education’ in Korea
thus promotes a more holistic educational approach aligned with educational approaches
promoted in Western settings such as Finland in an attempt to modernise (e.g. Jeynes
2008; Sahlberg 2011; Yoon and Järvinen 2016).

‘Happiness education’ as a national development strategy to join the ‘developed’

world
‘Happiness education’ can also be understood as a goal for national development closely
linked with the domestic economy. Research on happiness has been connected with
national development, as nations move from an emphasis on economic growth to
quality of life concerns such as environmental protection and lifestyle issues as they
become wealthier (see Inglehart 2000). Happiness was found to display a curvilinear
association with economic development as countries move from subsistence-level econ-
omies to advanced industrial societies, such that wealthier countries tend to be happier
than poorer countries, but the curve levels off beyond a certain threshold. Inglehart
(2000) argues that overall happiness and subjective well-being are likely to be higher in
stable democracies than societies characterised by a low sense of well-being. Countries
such as Japan, Bhutan, Korea, Singapore, and Vanuatu have taken steps to incorporate
happiness as a national goal: ‘Some countries have, to various extents, formally recognised
happiness as a goal of their development and education policies’ (UNESCO 2016, 25). A
growing body of work also documents the politics of happiness in China, where improving
people’s lives and well-being through happiness campaigns, happiness surveys, and well-
being promotion measures has become an explicit policy objective (Yang 2013).
In the case of Korea, ‘happiness’ has become a keyword to describe the broader dom-
estic policy direction. The Korean government has actively addressed the issue of unhap-
piness to bring more stability to Korean society as they move from developing to
developed country and take an active part in the international community. ‘Happiness
Education’ gained momentum as the campaigning convened for the 2012 presidential
election, and was extensively covered under the banner ‘Happy Citizens’ under President
Park. An analysis of the 18th presidential election Policy Proposal suggests that ‘Happiness
Education’ is included under the broader national theme of ‘Happiness Policy’ and touches
on the key themes emphasised by the FYP. This policy is not limited to education and
spans disparate policy areas, notably social welfare policies. The two major parties,
liberal and conservative, have taken different educational ideologies in the past, but
both candidates in the 2012 presidential election recognised that the educational
system should be more student-focused. In Korea, the ideology of ‘universal education
welfare’ emphasises welfare coverage for citizens in the educational sector, which can
10 S. W. KIM AND L. Y. KIM

enhance life quality and the subsequent happiness of citizens. Such ideology was advo-
cated more actively from the liberal camp, but candidate Park from the conservative
party also embraced this approach (Kim 2013). Candidate Moon, the next president,
pursued similar educational agendas (i.e. ‘Education with a comma – Happy 8th Graders
Project’ and ‘Career Education Searching for Students’ Dreams’), and further carried out
the expansion of the Free Semester Policy to a full year in all middle schools in two pro-
vinces and one metropolitan city by the first year, with Seoul joining the full expansion in
2020.
As seen above, the FYP policy is articulated within a broader national framework of
‘Happiness Education’ which is not narrowly limited to a single policy or politics, but
touches on a national development strategy in the context of globalisation. ‘Happiness
Education’ strikes a popular nerve, tapping into the myriad problems faced by youth in
Korea and the fear of being left behind in a competitive and globalising world (Abelmann,
Park, and Kim 2009). ‘Happiness Education’ has thus become a focal point of transform-
ation for nation-building and prosperity of the nation’s population, focused on removing
the negative elements that have characterised Korean education up until now (i.e. a test-
driven rigid top-down streamlined system).

Taking charge of one’s own happiness for the collective good

As argued earlier, ‘Happiness Education’ is embedded in a developmental state rhetoric
used to create neoliberal subjectivities to ‘catch up’ with advanced, developed countries.
We now turn to explore the type of citizen/subject the education system strives to produce
through the FYP as articulated by ‘Happiness Education’, and the inherent contradictions
raised by the ‘Happiness Education’ discourse. ‘Happiness Education’ strives to cultivate a
modern neoliberal subject who can ultimately exercise psychological autonomy and is
willing to take responsibility for their own decisions but also works for the collective
good, two opposing goals. The ‘pursuit of happiness by following one’s dream and
talent’ is emphasised and repeated throughout the official documents outlining the
goals of FYP (MoE 2013, 2015). This reflects a fundamentally individualistic approach: Indi-
viduals are encouraged to make independent choices in their learning and career options
based on individual interest and orientation to serve their own interests, not that of the
collective. Furthermore, they are asked to take charge of their own happiness through
self-directed learning on topics of their choice. However, the FYP promises collective
returns benefiting the society at large, turning individual happiness into a tool to
achieve the collective welfare of the nation. The FYP discourse intricately weaves a narra-
tive linking the collective with the individual, constructing an image of the ideal modern
citizen embodying individualistic values necessary for national development and
prosperity.
Such collective top-down approach to promoting the individualistic values of ‘Happi-
ness Education’ raises further contradictions, some of which are deeply problematic,
such as the transfer of responsibility from state to students. The FYP proposes to
remove the previously highly standardised test-focused curriculum and to place the
responsibility of learning on students themselves, who are encouraged to find their
own happiness through independent self-discovery outside of the rigid school curriculum.
The state retreat from education provisioning thus places the responsibility and blame of
 COMPARATIVE EDUCATION 11

failing to ‘become’ squarely on individuals. Out-of-school time has been largely scrutinised
for creating a void and reinforcing the inequalities between the haves and the have-nots:
Those who have more resources can provide children with rich educational and learning
experiences during the FYP period while the poorer have no opportunities, reinforcing the
gaps between the rich and the poor (Park 2017). This is very similar to the phenomenon of
summer loss observed in the United States, where achievement gaps across social lines
were found to increase seasonally when students were out of school as wealthier children
continued gaining new skills while poorer children’s gains were stagnant (Alexander,
Entwisle, and Olson 2001). This suggests that schools play a compensatory role and out-
of-school activities play a large role in increasing educational inequality, as also argued
by Chmielewski (2017). In light of this research, the FYP is likely to increase educational
inequalities by removing time spent in schools structured around a streamlined
curriculum.
The retreat of the state provision of education is accompanied by a discourse reframing
the current educational problem as an individual issue. The FYP emphasises the endemic
problems of the current education system, but then deflects attention away from struc-
tural and institutional issues to focus on an individualised solution based on individuals’
ability to self-motivate, become creative, enterprising, and self-directed in their learning,
which promises individual happiness. Thus, the ‘Happiness Education’ discourse arguably
masks structural problems by individualising and psychologising the self, tapping into the
cultivation of an ideal modern subject as a solution to the problem. This echoes the work
of scholars such as Yang (2013) or Walkerdine (2003). Yang’s work focuses on how the
Chinese party state promotes the cultivation of ‘fake happiness’ of marginalised people
whose problems are interpreted as individual and psychological rather than stemming
from structural issues such as limited welfare or poverty. As a result, marginalised individ-
uals whose livelihoods were destroyed by economic restructuring are to blame for their
failures in the market economy, and television counselling programmes serve state-
defined purposes of constructing an image of a harmonious society and a benevolent
paternal state. Yang (2013) further explains the nationalistic goals for promoting happi-
ness: ‘The Party-sponsored promotion of happiness in China is … a governing technology
based on psychologization to promote both economic development and social and pol-
itical stabilization’ (296). Walkerdine (2003) focuses on gender flexibility and how the con-
stant reinvention of the self affects British women. She describes the challenges of the
market economy which places immense pressure on individuals to become flexible and
autonomous subjects, able to cope with instability and risks faced at work and in terms
of lifestyle – what she calls the ‘burden of liberty’. The case of the FYP echoes these argu-
ments: in the context of the FYP, happiness emerges as a tool of governance to shape the
modern subject and to serve the purposes of the state (increase national competitiveness).
Individuals’ well-being becomes tied to the neoliberal self, eschewing medical, edu-
cational, or economic explanations for why individuals might be unhappy.

China’s ‘quality education’ and Korea’s ‘happiness education’

Some striking parallels can be drawn between the ‘quality’ discourse in China and ‘Happi-
ness Education’ in Korea, although we do not claim that they are the same. In China, there
is a large body of scholarship documenting the national discourse of suzhi (素質) which
12 S. W. KIM AND L. Y. KIM

rose to prominence during the reform era. The usage of the term in the media and aca-
demic journal articles peaked in the 2000s, and took on multi-faceted meanings in
China’s quest for modernity, civility, and national advancement. The term suzhi (素質)
has been used to describe the entire population of a nation (China in this case), but
could also be applied to specific individuals or groups, justifying certain social and political
hierarchies by identifying those of ‘high’ quality as deserving more income, power, and
status compared to those of ‘low’ quality (Kipnis 2011). The rural/urban distinction was
in particular salient in the context of rural modernisation, targeting the ‘backwardness’
of rural people and seeking to modernise education to improve their ‘quality.’ Kipnis
(2006) describes how the Communist Party of China (CCP) promoted the suzhi discourse
in the context of major propaganda campaigns for birth control (‘population quality’) in
the early 1980s and under the global ‘education for quality’ movement in the late
1980s, successfully mandating all education reforms at all levels under this slogan in
1999. The one-child policy in 1979 aimed to replace quantity with quality, moving
towards higher population ‘quality’ in China’s quest for modernisation. In order to raise
the quality of the people of the nation, education quality was emphasised. The current
education system was seen as an impediment for modernisation not conducive to increas-
ing population quality.
Dello-Iacovo (2009) points to the ambiguity of the translation for suzhi jiaoyu, including
but not limited to ‘competence education’, ‘quality education’, ‘essential qualities-oriented
education’, or ‘character education’, reflecting the inability and limitation of English words
to convey the broader connotations of the term. Quality education does not refer to a
specific pedagogy or approach, but lumps a wide variety of seemingly unrelated edu-
cational issues:
‘Quality education’ refers to a curriculum and method of instruction that extends beyond
passing exams and rote learning to emphasizing creativity, civic responsibility and overall per-
sonal development. Reforms to promote quality education focus on encouraging self-
expression, manual dexterity, life skills appropriate to the local environment, and extra-curri-
cular activities such as music, sport, and art. (Murphy 2004, 4)

‘Quality education’ thus encourages curriculum reforms that aim to move away from
examination-driven education systems to broader educational aims focused on develop-
ing well-rounded individuals to increase population ‘quality’ (Dello-Iacovo 2009; Kipnis
2011). These goals echo those sought by the FYP, which strives to produce citizens that
are well-rounded, skilled and self-directed, moral, and nationalistic. A holistic educational
approach based on a Western conception of developing the whole person is promoted
both by suzhi jiaoyu and the FYP, incorporating arts and sports classes beyond academic
subjects. Furthermore, the problems identified by the ‘education quality’ discourse and the
‘happiness education’ discourse are similar, raising concerns about narrowly test-focused
education, pressure, and a lack of opportunities to develop qualities necessary to adapt to
the modern world, such as creative independent thinking skills, integrated practical skills,
team-work and cooperation.
The suzhi discourse emphasises the need to look to the West, where educational prac-
tices conducive to cultivating the perfect neoliberal subject are thought to originate from.
Bill Gates, a college dropout, is cited as an example to emulate: ‘During the late 1990s,
Chinese TV shows on education bemoaned the inability of the Chinese education
 COMPARATIVE EDUCATION 13

system to produce creative entrepreneurs like Bill Gates’ (Kipnis 2011, 292). As argued pre-
viously, similar patterns are found in the ways in which the FYP cites Western cases as an
ideal to emulate. However, we note that the FYP discourse is more self-critical and nega-
tive than the suzhi discourse, rejecting the current domestic education system in search of
a foreign utopia. This is grounded within a strong nationalistic discourse chiefly concerned
with sustaining the national modernisation drive and global competitiveness.
China’s attempt to borrow from Western educational methodologies is symbolic as
education reformers are not committed to the conceptual bases that underpin these edu-
cational concepts that are about self-expression, individualism, and egalitarianism (Dello-
Iacovo 2009). The widespread support for education quality was found to be coupled with
widespread resistance and ambivalence in practice in China (Pepper 1996). Despite the
decades-long cyclical ‘campaigns’ in China to remove the overly exam-focused fervour
of parents, teachers, and students, the results were largely evaluated as unsuccessful
due to the primary importance placed on university admittance: ‘Educational reformers
can tinker with the content of the curriculum and method of its delivery all they like,
but the primary purpose of the game from the vantage of the participants will not have
changed’ (Kipnis 2011, 300). Similarly, in Korea, despite the implementation of the FYP,
the observation that wealthier families would use their ‘free’ time by increasing the
number of hours spent in cram schools to better prepare for university admittance
(Park 2017; So and Kang 2014) goes against the fundamental goals of ‘Happiness Edu-
cation’. Further gaps between intention and practice are likely to emerge as FYP is met
by resistance from teachers who recognise the importance of student-centered learning,
but face additional tasks besides their regular teaching duties which they were not prop-
erly trained for, and practical challenges such as increased administrative work, poor infra-
structure, lack of information and resources, and inadequate support (Park 2015; Seong
2018).
As described above, ‘Happiness Education’ in Korea grew out of a very different context
from ‘quality education’ in China. ‘Quality education’ draws on an older, more established
national discourse of suzhi which rose to prominence during the reform era in China in the
1980s, and is linked with the ‘population quality’ discourse, modernisation, and the cre-
ation of (new) hierarchies, while ‘Happiness Education’ is more narrowly focused on edu-
cation and the mental health of youth. However, we note convergence in those two
discourses as parallel themes emerge between ‘happiness education’ and ‘quality edu-
cation’. Both overarching narratives contribute to construct the image of the ideal
citizen embodying qualities that can be acquired through holistic forms of education
rejecting the test-driven curriculum.

Conclusion
The purpose of our study was not to cover the content and specifics of the practice of
the FYP, but to focus on the core ideas and motivations permeating the official dis-
course around the FYP within the context of the broader national ‘Happiness Edu-
cation’ framework. The particular case of the FYP illustrates how a localised global
reform discourse can not only impact Korean domestic educational discourse, but
also raise multiple contradictions. The narrative of Korea’s struggle to establish itself
as a ‘developed’ country sheds light on the frequent references to foreign cases and
14 S. W. KIM AND L. Y. KIM

rejection of domestic practices such as the test-driven system. The dichotomous view
of the advanced/underdeveloped country classification and the quasi-equivalence
observed between the terms ‘globalization’ and ‘global competitiveness’ in Korea is
notable – the term globalisation has become synonymous to economic growth in
the context of Korea’s rapid integration and development (Kim 1997). Globalisation
was initially understood as a political rhetoric in Korea when the term was first intro-
duced into the 1995 May 31 Education Reform by politicians and was associated
with the anxiety of being left behind in the global era. This was also linked with the
large-scale exodus of students seeking educational opportunities elsewhere, as
Korean parents sent their children abroad to seek a ‘modern’ education not based
on rote learning and test-drilling, the national perception being that domestic edu-
cation is lower in quality than that of more economically advanced English-speaking
countries (Abelmann, Park, and Kim 2009).
We note that the FYP discourse highlights the emphasis on the negative aspects of
Korea’s own education system and the desire to follow in the steps of more established
‘developed’ countries. This corroborates past studies that describe Korea as viewing
other developed countries’ education positively while evaluating their own domestic
system negatively, hoping to look outwards and aspiring to the education policies of refer-
ence countries (Sung 2011). Domestic awareness of the problem has been amplified by
the global reform movement that took hold of OECD countries in particular and spread
quickly with the dominance of international assessment tests such as PISA. The global
reform discourse has emphasised high-stakes testing, accountability, and performance
(Grek 2009; Sellar and Lingard 2013). However, among high-performing systems, certain
countries (e.g. Finland) became model reference countries while others not (e.g. Korea)
(Yoon and Järvinen 2016). This implicitly sends a message regarding which types of
systems are valued over others. Narrowly test-oriented systems are not seen as desirable
by global standards. Furthermore, benchmarks such as PISA and TIMSS data have also
shown Korea to score relatively low on dimensions of student well-being (Kwon, Kristjáns-
son, and Walker 2017; OECD 2014; Yeom et al. 2014), further amplifying the problem of too
much competition in test-driven systems.
As a result, we observe a strong rejection of the current education system characterised
by a language of deficit in the FYP rhetoric. In the FYP discourse, students are portrayed as
prisoners of the current system consisting of a unified, rigid, and stifling top-down teacher-
centered curriculum and a high-stakes testing environment. We note that the deficits of
the current system that the FYP identifies and targets arise from a top-down curriculum
that does not pay attention to individual-oriented qualities: individual interest, developing
individual skills and goals, free time for one-self, and student-driven learning.
Such qualities are now important in light of the shifts that have occurred since the
1960s. The values that were promoted by the developmental state to promote national
development in the 1960s were discipline, obedience, and hard work as education
played a central role to the collective process of state formation and served to ‘cultivate
the social attitudes and personal skills which are conducive to both cohesive and
orderly citizenship and to disciplined and cooperative labour. This is seen as more impor-
tant than the cultivation of specific technical skills, which, in any case, can often be learned
on the job later’ (Green 1999, 64). However, such qualities are now being rejected and
replaced by contrasting neoliberal qualities such as autonomy, creativity, initiative-
 COMPARATIVE EDUCATION 15

taking and soft skills in the twenty-first Century economy under the banner of ‘Happiness
Education’. Thus, the nationalistic discourse of ‘Happiness Education’ proposes to make a
radical transformation in their strategy for national competitiveness: If long hours of struc-
tured rote-memorisation and high levels of stress were suitable for building the economy
in the 1960s, its continued growth requires a radical shift. This creates a counter-narrative
focused on ‘undoing’ previous narratives of modernity, state-building, globalisation, and
what it takes to become a successful modern citizen.
Ultimately, the narrative of the Free Year Program revolves around ‘undoing’ the pro-
blems created by the current Korean education system. The FYP more specifically pro-
poses to temporarily suspend the school curriculum for a year to cultivate the much-
needed modern qualities in Korean students in order to foster a type of citizenship that
would allow Korea to become globally competitive economically. This ‘quick fix’ solution
is perplexing because it does not address the fundamental underpinnings of the system,
such as the content and pacing of the curriculum or the entrance exam itself at the heart of
the problem.
We further argue that the FYP discourse is problematic, as it (1) places the burden of
learning in the pursuit of self-development and happiness squarely on individuals while
masking structural problems, and (2) encourages non-instrumental goals (e.g. happiness)
in the pursuit of the instrumental goal of national development. The Happiness Education
framework articulates a collective goal (national development) infused with a neoliberal
logic emphasising individual happiness and individualistic qualities such as creativity.
These seem contradictory as happiness now becomes instrumental in achieving ‘hard’
goals of national competitiveness.
Our analysis reveals that the FYP seems to lack focus and direction as a nation-wide pro-
gramme as a result of such overarching confusing and contradictory framework. The FYP
narrative articulates a localised global discourse embracing values of more ‘developed’
models for domestic purposes, rejecting the current education system and frequently
referencing cases from more established ‘developed’ countries. However, the references
are not coherent, and draw from multiple foreign programmes from a variety of regions
that present features distinct from the FYP in Korea. Thus, the ‘Happiness Education’ dis-
course taps into a broader national imaginary without articulating a coherent strategy for
the specifics of the practice. For instance, at the start of implementation, the FYP moved
between a focus on career orientation and instructional innovation (Gim 2017). At present,
the emphasis on career is still salient in the discourse but the focus is diffuse compared to
programmes such as those in Japan or Sweden. The pursuit of individual happiness or cul-
tivation of self-directed learning of students is also dampened by the top-down approach
of the FYP, contrary to programmes such as in England or Denmark.
We conclude that the goals of the FYP cited by the Ministry of Education such as build-
ing students’ character and nurturing creativity, enhancing their happiness and reducing
stress, and providing students with the opportunity to develop their talents and to identify
their future dreams (MoE 2013) express the neoliberal ideals of the ‘happy citizen’.
However, the gaps between discourse and practice are glaring. Critics of the FYP have
largely been concerned by students’ declining academic ability, poor infrastructure for
community programmes, the lack of teacher support to provide students with a rich
experience during this period, and even worsening gaps between the rich and the poor
16 S. W. KIM AND L. Y. KIM

as wealthier students might take advantage of this period to attend high-end cram schools
and better prepare for tests (Park 2017; So and Kang 2014).
We argue that the centrality of neoliberal governance observed in the Happiness Edu-
cation discourse framing the FYP echoes the ‘quality’ discourse in China; both discourses
are used as a tool of governance defining the ideal citizen and articulating qualities to be
cultivated through holistic forms of education rejecting the test-driven curriculum. Happi-
ness as a governing tool has rarely been explored in the Korean context, but is a promising
avenue for future research in order to better understand the deep-seated ambivalence in
Korean education and Korea’s modernisation pains. The case of Korea is particularly inter-
esting as they are caught in between multiple competing agendas: The cultivation of a
modern neoliberal subject in pursuit of their own happiness versus a collective nationalis-
tic agenda in pursuit of global competitiveness, and multiple competing Western-inspired
and domestic education discourses.

Notes
1. We will refer to this programme as FYP from this point onward.
2. Will be referred to as ‘Korea’ from this point onward.
3. The Free Year Program was first mentioned during President Park’s campaign in November,
2012, and was selected as a national project in January, 2013, to be implemented for a full
semester initially. It was piloted in 42 pioneering schools in 2013, expanded progressively
to 2551 schools by 2015, and launched in 2016. Almost half of all middle schools (46%)
chose to participate for the first year (MoE 2017), during which those middle school students
spent a full year pursuing activities outside of the traditional curriculum.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Funding
This work was partly supported by the Yonsei University Research Grant of 2020.

Notes on contributors
Sung won Kim is Assistant Professor of Comparative Education at Yonsei University at the Depart-
ment of Education, Seoul, South Korea. Her research and teaching interests include international
and comparative education, China’s economic reforms and education, cultural perspectives on par-
enting and child socialisation.
Lois Y. Kim received an Ed.M. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and was a secondary
school math teacher in the U.S. and South Korea. Her research interests include student learning
support and teaching practice in comparative perspectives.

ORCID
Sung won Kim http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6925-2511
 COMPARATIVE EDUCATION 17

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20 S. W. KIM AND L. Y. KIM

Appendix A. Documents searched through websites.

Organisation Magazine/Report/Resoruce No. Author(s)

KEDI Educational Development (magazine) 184 Kim, Young Yoon
184 Seo, Nam Soo
187 Choi, Sang Duk
188 Choi, Sang Duk
193 Paek, Soon Keun
193 Gim, Chae Chun
195 Choi, Sang Duk
The Eduforum (magazine) 237 Yoon, Yeo Bok
237 Choi, Sang Duk
237 Lee, Kwang Woo
237 Lee, Ji Yeon
239 Bae, Sang Hoon
241 Shim, Eun Seok
245 Park, Hyo Jeong
246 Park, Yoong Soo
247 Choi, Sang Duk
284 Kang, In Ae

Organisation Magazine/Report/Resource No. Author(s)

KEDI Free Semester Implementation Plan PP 2013-01-1 Choi, Sang Duk; Shin, Chul Gyun; Park,
Gyun Yeol; Kim, Ah Mi
Research Report on Middle School Free RR 2014–17 Shin, Chul Gyun; Kim, Eun Young; Hwang,
Semester Program Implementation Eun Hee; Song, Kyoung Oh; Park, Min
Jeong; Jeong, Yoon Ha
Comprehensive Report on Free Semester CR 2014–19 Choi, Sang Duk; Lee, Sang Eun; Kim,
Pilot Schools Case Studies Byoung Chan, Park, So Young, So,
Kyoung Hee, Hong, Chang Nam, Lee, Ji
Eun; Heo, Ye Ji, Kim, Tae Yeon
2014 Comprehensive Manual for the Free CRM 2014–56 Choi, Sang Duk; Shin, Chul Gyun; Hwang,
Semester Program Operation Eun Hee; Lee, Sang Eun; Kim, Eun
Young
Forum in Search of the Direction for CRM 2017–74 Kim, Kyoung Ae
Expansion and Development
KRIVET Success Factors and Support Plan for Free 2014–21 Chang, Hyun Jin; Lee, Ji Yeon; Yoon, Soo
Semester Period Focused on Career Search Rin; Lee, Yoon Jin
Research on Career Experience Activities 2016–32 Kim, Seung Bo; Chu, Hwi Jung; Kim,
Linked with Free Semester Program Young Sik
Effect Analysis and Development Plan for Free 2017–14 Chu, Hwi Jung; Kim, Young Sik; Yang,
Semester Career Experience Jung Seung
The HRD Review, Global Report – Outcomes Yoon, Hyeong Han
and Implications from Ireland’s Transition
Year Program
2013 The First Career Education Forum Kwak, Byeong Sun
(International Forum Resource)
2013 The First Career Education Forum Lee, Ji Yeon
(International Forum Resource)
2013 The Second Career Education Forum Lee, Ji Yeon
(International Forum Resoruce)
KICE Education Square 52 Chung, Young Geun
Education Square 52 Kwak, Byeong Sun
NYPI Research on the Plans for the Linkage 13-R19 Seong, Eun Mo and Roh, Seung Hyun
between the Free Semester
Implementation and Youth Experience
Activities