International Journal of Educational Development 86 (2021) 102475

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International Journal of Educational Development

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijedudev

Policy referencing patterns in South Korea: The Free Year Program and the
High School Credit Policy
Sungwon Kim *, Subeen Jang, Minjoo Chong
Department of Education, Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: This study sets out to examine the referencing patterns of two key policies in South Korea, the Free Year Program
Free Year Program (FYP) and the High School Credit Policy (HSCP). Classic reference countries US and Finland were frequently cited
High School Credit Policy in the HSCP sample while less cited references such as Ireland, Sweden, and Denmark appeared for the FYP. In
South Korea
many cases, referenced countries were linked to a distinct set of themes across policies. The active and wide­
Education borrowing
Reference societies
spread practice of referencing in Korea is demonstrated by the large proportion of external references at the start
Policy transfer of each policy cycle for the FYP and HSCP as well as the wide range of reference countries spread across multiple
themes. Our study demonstrates how the same borrower country (Korea) can develop a repertoire of varying
reference societies depending on the specific policy to legitimize domestic pursuits.

1. Introduction
The topic of educational borrowing deserves special attention in
Korean official educational discourse and documents, where ‘normative’
or ‘pragmatic’ frames advocate for policy borrowing and approach it
from a best practice perspective (Steiner-Khamsi, 2014). It has now
become common practice in Korea to start with documenting foreign
cases when exploring policy options in order to benchmark domestic
practice with that of other countries, notably those of model reference
societies. Such widespread culture of external policy referencing pro­
vides a unique opportunity to quantify referencing patterns. Recent
work by Parcerisa and Verger (2019) has attempted quantification,
identifying the main trends regarding the usage of reference societies in
Chile (Parcerisa and Verger, 2019). However, our study is the first
attempt, to the best of knowledge, to compare systematically how, in the
context of a single country (Korea), reference societies may change
depending on the policy and the stage in the policy process.
This study sets out to examine the referencing patterns of two key
policies that are at different stages of implementation, the Free Year
Program (FYP)1 implemented in 2016 and the High School Credit
Policy (HSCP) to be fully implemented in 2022. These two policies
were selected because they have attracted the most attention in Korea
in recent years, and are distinct in content but are part of the same
reform package tapping into overlapping themes. The main goal of the
FYP is to provide middle school students with a year-long break from
the formal curriculum and related examinations during which students
can pursue various activities of their choice (e.g., career search, arts
and sports, and club activities) to explore their career paths (Ministry
of Education MoE, 2013). On the other hand, the HSCP aims to provide
a credit-based curriculum where students can choose diverse subjects
and obtain credit for them, being able to graduate once they have
attained the total number of cumulative credits required (Ministry of
Education, 2017)
There is no clear evidence that either or both of these policies are
the result of borrowing from an identifiable source, but an abundance
of diverse references are linked to these policies. The purpose of our
study is to analyze and compare the extent to which external references
play a central role in the framing and justification of both policies. Are
certain countries more frequently referenced than others regardless of
specific policy and serve as stable reference societies, or does this
depend on the specific policy? Is referencing more likely to occur at the
beginning stage of the policy cycle or is the frequency stable over time?
We examine two policies in order to better understand the meaning of
reference societies (whether they are stable or policy-dependent) and
how they may be used across various contexts to serve different
purposes.

* Corresponding author at: Yonsei University, Department of Education, 50 Yonsei-ro Seodaemun-gu, Seoul, South Korea.
E-mail address: sungwkim@yonsei.ac.kr (S. Kim).
1
Free Year Program is often referred to as Free semester system, Free-learning semester system, or Exam(test)-free semester system because it was extended from
one semester to a full year.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2021.102475
Received 16 April 2021; Received in revised form 15 July 2021; Accepted 25 July 2021
Available online 2 August 2021
0738-0593/© 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
S. Kim et al.
1.1. Theoretical framework
Scholars have attempted to identify the different ways that
borrowing may occur, which can range from purposeful borrowing of a
specific policy for adoption to referencing a set of external policies and
discourses without intent to import (e.g., Phillips and Ochs, 2004,
Steiner-Khamsi, 2014). Adamson et al. (2017) recognize that the ‘policy
referencing’ process may be rhetorical, symbolic, or theatrical and may
or may not involve the actual transfer and implementation of policies
and/or practices from one system to another. The frequent strategy of
referencing employed by policy-makers to justify and legitimate do­
mestic policies by linking them with external and global trends has been
growing as reforms travel widely and spotlight strong PISA performers
and their “best practices” (Grek, 2009; Rappleye, 2012; Auld and Morris,
2016). In this way, borrowing is used as a political tool for legitimation
while projecting itself as objective, scientific and data-driven.
Studies examining the purpose and intent of referencing highlight
the importance of the local context, which drives the borrowing logic.
The concept of “cross-national attraction” which seeks to understand
why certain countries are attracted to and more likely to borrow from
and/or reference others illustrates the critical role of the local context in
shaping borrowing practices (Phillips and Ochs, 2004). Halpin and
Troyna (1995) explain how the reference country selected is more likely
to present “some synchrony” with the borrowing country in terms of the
characteristics of the education systems and the political ideologies. For
instance, US affinity with UK led them to be attracted to UK education
models in the early 1990s during the Reagan and Thatcher administra­
tions, and vice versa (Finegold et al., 1992; Cooper, 1990). Thus,
borrowing is portrayed as a largely domestically driven action, and has
Fig. 1. FYP and HSCP themes and key discourses.
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International Journal of Educational Development 86 (2021) 102475
been compared to an octopus:
Local actors reach out and grab the arm of the octopus that is closest
to their particular policy agenda, and thereby attach (local) meaning
to a (global) policy. By default, any study on receptiveness becomes a
study on selective borrowing. Policy borrowing is never wholesale,
but always selective, and by implication, reflects the “socio-logic” or
context-specific reasons for receptiveness (Steiner-Khamsi, 2014,
155-56)
The octopus metaphor highlights the importance of the local policy
context, which selects which parts of which policies to import. The se­
lection is not driven by the external condition or the objective merit of
the policy borrowed, but rather the position of the octopus’s arm and the
interpretation of the domestic and the global policy. Thus, “selective
borrowing” is a consequence of the local logic and distorts the source of
borrowing to suit local needs. The scholarship has often focused on
domestic motives (hence the term “cross-national attraction”), and has
downplayed policy or program content— for instance, convenience may
drive the borrowing logic based on whether the lending country offers a
reference program similar to the local agenda regardless of which
country it is. In this case, country factors and cross-national attraction
are irrelevant to understanding referencing patterns because references
are decontextualized and opportunistic in nature, grabbing onto content
that is closest to their agenda. Our study sets out to explore how such
tendencies to reference may occur in local contexts with more accepting
attitudes towards external authority such as Korea by examining two
policies, the Free Year Program (FYP) and the High School Credit Policy
(HSCP).
S. Kim et al.
1.2. Korean cross-referencing patterns
The FYP and the HSCP grew out of a long series of reforms in the
context of the national curriculum reforms since the 1990s that reflect a
combination of neoliberal and democratic ideologies and draw on key­
words such as student-centered, diversity, freedom, choice, autonomy,
individualization, holistic education. As shown in Fig. 1, both policies
are articulated within a broader national discourse highlighting the
endemic problems of public education (e.g., excessive competition,
stratification, standardization) viewed as obstacles to national compet­
itiveness. Some differences are notable between the FYP and the HSCP.
The FYP was part of the broader ‘Happiness Education’ campaign pro­
moting a more holistic educational approach focused on students’ career
development (Baek, 2021; Kim and Kim, 2021; Ministry of Education
MoE, 2013, 2015), while the HSCP was publicized as a ‘learner-centered
happiness education where students can choose their own subjects’
focused more exclusively on curriculum diversity and choice (Kim and
Kim, 2021). Besides this divergence in focus, the more remarkable dif­
ference is that the HSCP directly affects the core curriculum of high
schools and covers more ‘hot buttons’ as it is more closely associated
with evaluation and college entrance exams that are controversial and
highly important in Korean society. On the other hand, the FYP falls
slightly outside of this core system, being implemented for a year outside
of the school curriculum for middle school students, a period that is less
critical for the college entrance exam compared to high school.
Both policies drew heavily on the May 31 education reform
discourse, which was articulated under the first civilian government in
1995 after a long period of military dictatorships, and set the tone and
agenda for Korea’s education reforms until now (An and Ha, 2015).
These market-oriented reforms were criticized for being blindly and
thoughtlessly imported from the West without deeply considering the
domestic circumstances in Korea (Kim, 2006). A further examination of
Korea’s borrowing history reveals strong ties with the US in particular,
whose influence was present since the very first modern schools that
were open in 1883–1910 with the help of American and European
missionaries. Despite the disagreement about the exact origin of modern
education in Korea, the desire to emancipate from China during the
Gabo reforms in late 1980s created the conditions for Korea’s active
adoption of European and American knowledge (Dittrich, 2014). The
modernization of schooling in Korea largely occurred under the two
occupations of Japan and the US, followed by a long period of author­
itarian regimes led under pro-American military dictatorships until the
early 1990s. As a result, contrary to the organic development of modern
education systems which was linked to state formation in Europe
(Green, 1997), it has been argued that Korea’s modern education
evolved from foreign sources even before an independent modern state
was fully established (Kim, 2017). Korea was particularly receptive to
the US version of neoliberal democracy in the aftermath of the Korean
war (1950− 53) as education was seen as a vehicle for ideological
transfer and the long period of nondemocratic oppressive military re­
gimes in Korea made the idea of democracy linked with freedom and
autonomy extremely popular (Kang, 2002; Kim, 2017).
The influence of the OECD also played a central role in Korea’s
educational development, as Korea joined the OECD as a member
country in 1996. Korea’s rapid and unprecedented economic growth
triggered its obsession with benchmarks and international indicators
that were critical for their membership. The Korean government actively
cooperated with the educational projects carried out by the OECD and
were impacted by global discourse generated by PISA, ranking charts,
and other benchmarks (Shin and Joo, 2013). As a result, Korea also
joined the boat when Finnish education received widespread global
attention due to its high performance on PISA in the 2000s.
Studies have documented US and Finland as key reference countries
for Korea (e.g., Sung, 2011; Sung and Lee, 2017; Waldow et al., 2014).
Finnish education has been argued to serve as a projection screen to
externalize Korea’s domestic needs (e.g., Takayama et al., 2013) while
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International Journal of Educational Development 86 (2021) 102475
also used as a political statement against the conservative party by pro­
gressive party members to resist and criticize the current neoliberal policy
direction (e.g., Waldow et al., 2014). Finland’ foreignness and its disso­
ciation with neoliberal market-oriented reforms have made it a symbolic
counter-reference point to the US which has been conspicuously present
throughout Korea’s history (Sung and Lee, 2017; Waldow et al., 2014).
Besides these references, very few others (none to the best of our
knowledge) have been explored up to date in the Korean setting. How­
ever, there is a tendency to actively look for external references in local
contexts such as Korea with a history of borrowing, a neoliberal
competitive mindset dominated by narratives of globalization as national
growth, and more accepting attitudes towards external authority (Stei­
ner-Khamsi, 2004; Sung, 2010), contrary to the case of Sweden where
silent borrowing occurred to downplay the traces of external sources
(Waldow, 2009). We thus hope to shed light on the widespread practice of
referencing in Korea involving a larger number of countries in our study.
2. Research methodology
We conducted a systematic literature review and searched for all
publications on the FYP and the HSCP that were written in Korean for a
domestic audience. We did not set a limit to the dates of publication. We
note that these two policies are at different stages of implementation, and
thus designed our comparisons taking the policy cycle into consideration
to capture the referencing patterns. All published reports and academic
articles containing the word ‘free year program’ and ‘high school credit’ in
its title or abstract were identified and included. Online search on Korean
databases (RISS, DBPia, KSCO, KISS, eArticle) and the official websites of
the Ministry of Education and government-affiliated organizations such as
the Korean Education Development Institute (KEDI) or the Korean Insti­
tute for Curriculum and Evaluation (KICE) were thoroughly searched for
publications, and we excluded non-peer-reviewed articles. We did not
exclude reports based on discussion forums with experts or essay-type
articles because they reflect the opinion of experts, despite sometimes
not being strictly peer-reviewed. We included academic articles because
we note that many of the authors producing policy documents also pub­
lished academic articles and the tone across both types of documents were
consistent and actively supported looking to reference countries for so­
lutions. Including academic articles in our study further allowed us to
examine the extent to which academic publications critically examine
referencing practices. For the FYP, our search yielded a total of 719 ar­
ticles, of which 461 were screened and included in our final sample. For
the HSCP sample, our search yielded a total of 284 articles, of which 133
were selected into our final sample.
Next, we screened all articles for references to foreign cases by
skimming articles and creating a purposive search using the ‘FIND’
function and entering all OECD countries2 one by one in case any were
missed in our screening. A total of 67 articles on the FYP and 52 articles
on the HSCP made foreign references, which became our basic sample
for follow-up analyses. In order to better understand the proportion and
weight given to external referencing in the research, the specific coun­
tries referenced and their frequency over time, and the purpose and
nature of the references made, we created a detailed codebook including
codes to capture the topic reflected in the title, the countries referenced,
the proportion of text dedicated to the reference, the year referenced,
and the purpose of the reference.
For this last code, we created several categories to capture the pur­
pose and intention of each policy reference that appeared across the 119
articles (Appendix). Co-authors held weekly meetings to discuss the
codes and converged towards a total of eight ways in which to categorize
the referencing practices observed throughout the articles, four of which
appeared frequently (Learning/modeling, Authority, Illustrative example,
2
OECD countries were selected as our base countries as they are more likely
to be referenced.
S. Kim et al. International Journal of Educational Development 86 (2021) 102475

Similarity). The four other codes appeared only rarely throughout the
references (Critical perspective, Historical legacy, Competition, Conve­
nience), but were still included because they represent specific and
distinct purposes even if they are seldom used referencing strategies.
Extensive discussions were held to clarify the meaning of the codes, and
how they were different from each other so that ambiguities were
minimized. Codes were not mutually exclusive, such that a single
reference could be coded for two different meanings.
We noticed that the sample of studies about the FYP and the HSCP
drew on a common set of neoliberal and domestic-oriented keywords in
the context of the national curriculum reforms since the 1990s focusing
on choice, freedom, autonomy, diversity, individualization, and happi­
ness. We coded the whole sample of articles (N = 119) in atlas.ti 9 in
order to refine and capture these keywords central to the narrative of
these policies, and came up with a shortlist of 11 keywords: evaluation
method and reliability, college entrance exam/college entrance exam
competition,3 curriculum diversity, graduation criteria, career education,
learner-centered education, teacher professionalism and autonomy, school
autonomy, competency education, community-based and out-of-school
learning, and school facilities.
We applied network analysis in UCINET 6.23 in an exploratory
manner to tease out the density and centrality of the referencing net­
works and its clusters using its companion program NetDraw (Borgatti,
2002). External referencing can be considered as a social network in
which a theme and country are connected if the referenced country
draws on a specific theme when it occurs. When plotted, the network
shows which countries and themes are more central than others by
displaying centrality measuring inequality in ties and density showing
the number of connections in the network as a proportion of all possible
ties (Wasserman and Faust, 1994). Social Network Analysis has been
used in educational research to explore topics such as international
networks of foreign aid or flows of knowledge, student mobility, or so­
cial capital in schools (Barnett et al., 2016; Bridwell-Mitchell, 2017;
Clark, 2008; Shields and Menashy, 2019), and presents great promise Fig. 2. A. Proportion of articles including references over time (FYP sample).
when applied to tease out the patterns of externalization in the policy B. Proportion of articles including references over time (HSCP sample).
borrowing literature (see Steiner-Khamsi et al., 2019).
into this category. For the FYP, the large majority of articles (66 %) only
made a small international reference within the whole body of text. We
3. Findings
calculated the proportion of text that was dedicated to the external
reference by counting the number of lines dedicated to the reference and
3.1. External policy referencing patterns of the Free Year Program and the
dividing it by the total number of lines of the whole text and found that,
High School Credit Policy
overall, as much as 42.3 % of the total article length throughout the HSCP
sample was dedicated to an international/comparative analysis with the
Overall, a total number of 461 articles were published about the FYP in
purpose of referencing while this proportion was much lower at 7% for
Korea between 2013 and 2020, sharply increasing during the Expansion I
the FYP sample. This strongly suggests that external referencing plays a
phase (2014–2016) before gradually diminishing during the Full imple­
much bigger role for the HSCP compared to the FYP.
mentation phase (2016–2017) and Expansion II phase (2018–2020)
We next explored which countries were referenced throughout the
(Fig. 2A). As for the HSCP, a total of 133 articles were published between
two policies over time. On average, both the FYP and the HSCP body of
2010 and 2020, of which the majority were published since 2016 (Intro­
research referenced a total number of 2.8 countries each, but a larger
duction II phase). It is also during this time that frequent international
proportion of the HSCP sample more frequently referenced a single
references appear, sharply increasing in 2017 (Fig. 2B). These patterns
country only (41 %) compared to the FYP sample (28 %).
indicate that, in both cases, referencing international cases is practiced at
For the FYP sample, every single of the 67 articles made a reference
the beginning of each policy cycle when the policy is first introduced to
to Ireland, followed by Denmark (61 %), Sweden (43 %), UK (33 %)5, IB6
the public to justify its implementation in order to gain traction.
(15 %). Very few mentioned US (5%) or Japan (6%), Finland, Germany
Overall, a larger proportion of articles in the HSCP sample included an
or Australia (3% each), or France, New Zealand and Israel (2%).7 We
external reference (39.1 %) compared to the FYP sample (14.5 %). The
majority of the sample of articles about the HSCP (59.6 %) were actually
either fully developed foreign case articles to inform the policy in Korea or
5
were explicitly comparative,4 while only 9% of articles about the FYP fell We count UK (England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland) as one policy
context for the purpose of our analysis to keep it distinct from the other
contexts.
6
We included IB as a reference even though it is not a country because it
3
Both FYP and HSCP both include keywords related to college entrance, with appears frequently. IB (International Baccalaureate) is a rigorous pre-university
a specific focus on competition caused by college entrance examinations for the program founded in 1968 that is accepted worldwide and implemented in over
FYP. 150 countries.
4 7
For example, “The features of the high school credit system in US and its The percentages represent the number of times the specific country was
implications for Korean high school credit system: Focused on North Carolina” mentioned in the whole sample of articles. Articles can reference more than one
(Kim and Hong, 2018). country as explained previously.

4
S. Kim et al.
Fig. 3. A. Frequency of countries referenced over time (FYP sample). B. Fre­
quency of countries referenced over time (HSCP sample).
further note that the frequency with which these countries were refer­
enced varied over time. As shown in Fig. 3A, Ireland, Denmark, Sweden,
and the UK were referenced for the longest period of time from 2013 and
2020, the first three being the most salient references peaking around
2015 shortly after its introduction and following a similar pattern to
each other while the UK diverged from these three. References to the IB
and the US were spread out over a slightly shorter period of time, from
2013 to 2018, the IB being more salient and following a pattern more
similar to Ireland, Denmark, and Sweden while the presence of the US
was much scarcer.
We note that official documents about the FYP make references to a
stock list of countries that implement programs similar to the FYP: The
Irish Transition Year, Denmark’s Afterschool program (Efterskole),
Sweden’s Work experience program (PRAO), and UK’s Gap year were
mentioned in the 2013 key FYP Plan (MoE, 2013). These four countries
were also the most referenced in the FYP sample of studies and appeared
in the same order using the same stock expressions taken from the
official MoE plan (2013), making their source evident. Thus, once
reference countries were selected by official government sources as
models for the FYP, they continued being cited and promoted as models
for the FYP by others.
The patterns were different for the HSCP sample, where references to
the US were most numerous (62 %), followed by Finland (40 %), UK (29
%), Canada (27 %), Germany (25 %), Australia (21 %), IB (19 %), Japan
and France (15 %), Singapore (10 %), Sweden (8%), Denmark (6%),
China (4%), New Zealand and Hong Kong (2%). As shown in Fig. 3B, the
US, Finland, and the UK were referenced over the longest period from
2010 to 2020, and followed very similar patterns of referencing peaking
around 2018–2019 before dropping in 2020. Next, the IB and Germany
both displayed a similar pattern, emerging later in 2017, the curve
flattening out in 2018. Similar to the FYP, we note stock expressions
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International Journal of Educational Development 86 (2021) 102475
referring to Japan’s unit system or France and Germany’s credit systems
that are flagged as diverging from the credit system, but these model
examples are not found in official sources and are less systematically
referred to compared to the FYP across all documents.
Overall, the patterns of referencing for the FYP and the HSCP suggest
that the countries they select for referencing diverge. US and Finland
have a minimal presence for the FYP while they are central reference
societies for the HSCP, while Ireland, Denmark and Sweden are mini­
mally referenced in the HSCP while they are central players in the
discourse of the FYP. We note that countries that tend to be cited more
frequently also tend to be spread over a longer period of time.
3.2. Common themes associated with referenced countries: Social
Network Analysis
External policy references often appeared in connection with a
theme serving to illustrate or justify a specific point. For example, the
case of Ireland was cited to illustrate how career education was carried
out in schools, which is a core dimension of the FYP linked with the
discourse about future competencies, learner-centered education,
freedom, and choice (Fig. 1). We found that the FYP and HSCP dis­
courses overlapped to a large extent, drawing heavily on a list of
neoliberal and democratic keywords taken from the 1995 May 31 re­
forms that emphasize national competitiveness and drastically reform­
ing public education (Fig. 1). The ‘competency education’ domestic
narrative focused on national growth draws heavily from OECD’s
learning framework in the ‘Education 2030 project’ in 2015, which
highlights the need for new solutions in a rapidly changing world at the
individual and collective level and identifies a broad range of skills,
cognitive and meta-cognitive, social and emotional, and practical and
physical skills that are mediated by attitudes and values. The current
education system in Korea is seen as deficient because it does not foster
such global competencies in students, and is seen to be in a crisis situ­
ation in need of a breakthrough solution and a return to normalcy
(‘normalization’) because it introduces excessive competition, stratifi­
cation, and standardization (MoE, 2013).
The FYP and the HSCP both emphasize student happiness and well-
being as well as choice and diversity to overcome the current problems.
As argued in a previous paper (Kim and Kim, 2021), this raises contra­
dictions because these policies adopt a collective and centralized
top-down approach to foster individualistic bottom-up values such as
autonomy, freedom, and choice. School and teacher autonomy are
encouraged, with a focus on student-centered learning and a diverse
choice-based individualized curriculum, experiential out-of-school
learning, and community-based learning.
We coded for 11 themes that are linked to these broader narratives
characterizing the FYP and HSCP policies (see Methodology) and map­
ped out how the referenced countries were linked with corresponding
themes for the FYP and HSCP samples (Fig. 4A and B). The size of the
nodes depends on the number of times it appears, the centrality of its
position to its connectedness with themes, and the thickness of the lines
is proportional to the tie strength between the nodes. For the FYP
sample, we found that career education was the most central theme,
followed by competency education and community-based and out-of-school
learning with the largest number of connections with Ireland, Denmark,
and Sweden that had bigger nodes, followed by English-dominated UK,
Australia, and IB. As for the HSCP sample, US, Finland, Canada, UK,
Australia had bigger nodes, with multiple central and frequent themes:
graduation criteria, curriculum diversity, evaluation method and reliability,
career education, college entrance exam. We were struck by the lack of
country-specific patterns such that no single country was associated
with a specific theme, and multiple connections were made depending
on the policy and context. We next examine the ways in which refer­
ences were employed to better understand their purpose.
S. Kim et al.
Fig. 4. A. Network of referenced countries linked with corresponding themes
(FYP sample). B. Network of referenced countries linked with corresponding
themes (HSCP sample).
3.3. Purpose of external policy referencing
Learning/modeling was the most frequent code across both the FYP
(appears 39 times) and the HSCP (appears 46 times), and spells out the
intention to treat the referenced education system as a model and/or
learn and draw lessons from it. Sample quotes and all relevant references
are provided in Table 1. Authority was the next most frequent code across
both the FYP (appears 19 times) and the HSCP (appears 24 times), and
refers to references that serve to legitimize and justify the imple­
mentation of the current policy by treating the referenced system as a
source of authority. The most common reasons for the international
reference acting as an authoritative source of legitimacy were that the
referenced country was advanced economically, highly performing in
PISA, and/or had already been implementing the program/policy suc­
cessfully for a long period of time with positive results. It is interesting to
note that these reasons were quite arbitrary and generic, often pre­
senting gaps in logic or contradictions. For example, Bae (2010) cited
Finland as a source of inspiration justifying the implementation of the
HSCP in Korea because Finland is a high performer in PISA, but Korea’s
PISA performance has been equal if not higher than Finland over the
years, making this a weak justification for regarding the Finnish credit
system as a model of inspirations specifically for Korea.
External references occasionally served to illustrate or support the
article’s claim, the Illustrative example code appearing 6 times in the FYP
sample and 8 times in the HSCP sample. Specific examples of how
certain aspects of policies/programs were carried out in reference
countries were described in detail in order to illustrate an aspect of the
policy the article deemed important. This was an interesting use of
referencing, and is closely linked with Authority as the article implicitly
acknowledges the example as being an authoritative model supporting
their claims. We separated this code from Authority however because
Illustrative example was a much more specific referencing strategy
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International Journal of Educational Development 86 (2021) 102475
providing concrete details of the case referenced. Similarities with the
referenced country were also emphasized to justify its implementation,
giving the impression that borrowing education policy from a country
with similar characteristics to Korea was highly likely to lead in suc­
cessful adoption and implementation. The code Similarity appeared 12
times in the FYP and 3 times in the HSCP, and explicitly stated how the
reference society was similar to Korea.
Another interesting code that emerged was Competition, which
appeared only once in the HSCP sample, but is no less significant.
Competition urged more active referencing to ‘catch up’ with other
countries and become more competitive than those countries. For
instance, Song (2017) urged Korea to adopt an essay-based exam reform
as part of the move towards a credit-based system, and presented Ja­
pan’s adoption and expansion of the IB curriculum as a threat to Korea’s
status. Another reference was made about newcomer China already
having recently adopted the credit system just like the other more
advanced countries US, UK, and Singapore where the credit system is
already firmly established (Kang, 2019). We did not code for this
reference because the competitive element was not explicit, but this
subtly signals China’s rise to prominence as a potential competitor for
Korea. The competition aspect is particularly interesting as it reveals a
key motive for Korea’s active referencing practice—the fear of falling
behind its Asian neighbor competitors.
We do note a trend whereby a few more recently published articles
(since 2017) have started to become critical and reflexive of the
currently widespread referencing patterns in Korea. We created several
codes (Critical perspective, Convenience, Historical legacy) to capture this
phenomenon even though they only appeared 2–3 times because they
are conceptually important. The code Critical perspective adopted a
critical view of the international reference in question, either re-
evaluating the appropriateness of the reference or identifying the limi­
tations of the international program/policy cited. The code Convenience
noted that the international references were a sample of convenience
because they were selected based on availability of secondary sources
for example. Lastly, the historical influence of the US on Korea was
mentioned twice in the HSCP sample to justify and explain the frequent
references made to the US credit system, with a large focus on the
Carnegie unit. This was coded as Historical legacy, and suggests that
Korean researchers have become more aware of historical influences on
their referencing practice rather than simply presenting their reference
as having absolute superiority.
4. Discussion and conclusion
Our study provides empirical evidence with regards to the common
practice of external referencing in the context of both FYP and HSCP in
Korea, notably at the beginning of each policy cycle. Despite the simi­
larities between both policies that draw on overlapping neoliberal
democratic keywords (e.g., choice, freedom, autonomy, diversity, indi­
vidualization, and happiness), their referencing patterns were distinct.
External referencing played a bigger role for the HSCP compared to
the FYP as it was more frequent and was often the focus of the whole
article. Furthermore, classic reference countries US and Finland were
frequently cited in the HSCP sample. US was twice more frequently cited
than Finland (61 % versus 39 %), and both their positions were central
in the network of external references. According to the literature, US has
a long history of influence on Korean education since the establishment
of its modern education system, while Finland emerged as a best practice
model worldwide in contrast to the US neoliberal market-oriented sys­
tem— both are very popular reference societies in Korea (Sung, 2011;
Sung and Lee, 2017; Waldow et al., 2014).
On the other hand, Ireland was cited in every single one of the ar­
ticles about the FYP, and emerged as the ‘model example’ for the FYP.
The case of Ireland is particularly interesting as it is not a traditionally
popular reference in Korea or elsewhere worldwide. Ireland was first
mentioned in a series of official documents published in 2013 by the
S. Kim et al. International Journal of Educational Development 86 (2021) 102475

Table 1
Purpose/intent of referencing.
Free Year Program (FYP) High School Credit Policy (HSCP)
Reference countries Ireland, Denmark, Sweden, UK, IB, US, Japan, Finland, US, Finland, UK, Germany, Canada, Australia, IB, Japan,
Germany, Australia, France, New Zealand, Israel France, Singapore, Sweden, Denmark, China, New Zealand,
Hong Kong

1. Learning from: reference makes explicit that the
source provides a model to follow or lessons to draw
from.
2. Authority: reference serves to provide legitimacy by
acting as authoritative source (e.g., scientific
authority, superior practice of developed/advanced
countries).
3. Illustrative example: reference serves to illustrate or
support the researcher’s argument.
4. Similarity: reference emphasizes its similarity to
domestic environment or practice.
5. Competition: reference to another country with a
competitive mindset, to compete with the reference
country in question.
6. Critical perspective: common/popular reference is
cited by the researcher from a critical perspective (e.g.,
questioning its appropriateness or limitations)
7. Convenience: reference is limited to cases that are
convenient to research.
8. Historical legacy: reference highlights the historical
legacy of reference societies.
"The FYP was modeled after the Transition Year Program
from Ireland among the many education reforms abroad" (
Kang and An, 2015, 200)
"Policies such as Ireland’s Transition Year Program,
Denmark’s After School, UK’s Gap Year that provide
opportunities for the next generation to adapt to the new
environment and explore career pathways have already
been tested and tried for a long time in several developed
countries" (Kim and Kim, 2015, 150)
Supporting the importance of career development: "For
example, in Ireland, the Transition Year emphasizes
vocational experience and aims to increase personal, social,
vocational capabilities and citizenship" (Kim and Min, 2015,
182)
"The fundamental reason Korea decided to model itself on
Ireland’s Transition Year is because Ireland has a very
similar historical, cultural, and social setting. Notably,
education fever in Ireland facilitated its rapid economic
development but this created many social and educational
problems, similar to Korea" (Choi, 2015, 5)
"The fact that the Transition Year Program took over 40
years for Ireland since its pilot period in 1974 to become
successfully established needs to be taken into consideration
from our perspective" (Chun, 2018, 63) Note: this points out
the challenges and lengthy time frame
"In this study, we will be analyzing the 2007, 2015
curriculum reforms of Ohio state which influenced Korea’s
families and curriculum in order to draw lessons and
implications for developing our revised 2022 education
curriculum (the HSCP)" (Kim, 2020, 503)
"Finnish students who are high performers on PISA, are able
to be competitive by selecting an individualized curriculum.
Our country also needs to move away from the standardized
curriculum and implement the HSCP that allows for course
selection according to one’s abilities and interests regardless
of grade, age, and track/affiliation" (Bae, 2010, 14)
Supporting the importance of developing diverse classes by
career orientation/track beyond the core classes according to
student demand: "The Swedish secondary curriculum which
relies on a 9− 3 system (9 years in primary, 3 years in
secondary school) has diverse state ’programmes’ and
additional ’branches/orientations’" (Han, 2019, 68)
"We selected Germany as object of comparison because the
way the curriculum is organized and students evaluated in
Germany is very similar to ours, and the way education
quality is managed through Abitur in Germany is closely
linked to the evaluation system of the HSCP…" (Kim and
Woo, 2019, 12).
"We can take the example of the IB as an example of essay-
based exam reform. Japan’s education reforms expanded the
IB curriculum to 200 schools, and will be abolishing its
college entrance exam and implementing an essay-type
college test, are we going to watch on (and do nothing)?" (
Song, 2017, 147) Note: essay-based exam reform is promoted by
the HSCP
"Whether Germany’s system is credit-based has been subject
to debate. As we will note in section 5, Germany’s
’Gymnasium’ provides limited options for individual
students to choose from. Therefore this case differs from the
HSCP that strives to offer more curricular choices to students"
(Lee, 2018, 102)
"We limited our international cases to those that were
available second hand through other articles and books, so a
limitation of our study was that we were not able to analyze
all international cases for reference" (Kim and Oh, 2019, 115)
"Korea’s curriculum research started after 1945 to establish a
new system and fresh start moving away from the traces of
the Japanese occupation. At this time, the new direction
adopted by Korea’s education reforms were based on US’s
educational model, and it is highly likely that if US high
schools were not following the credit system, Korean high
schools would also not have carried it out. Therefore we can
assume that Korea’s second curriculum reforms are based on
US’s Carnegie unit and credit system" (Kim and Woo 2019, 3)

Note: All references are in the Appendix (Supplementary materials).

Ministry of Education (“Management Plan for Piloting FSP in Middle
Schools to Realize Happiness Education by Supporting Students’ Dreams
and Talents”) and by the Korean Education Development Institute (“An
Analysis of the Irish Transition Year program for the Implementation of
the FYP”). Ireland was argued to be similar to Korea because scarce
natural resources and heavy investment in human capital has resulted in
rapid education expansion and economic growth, as well as a hyper-
competitive education system and test-driven curriculum (Seoh and
Lee, 2015; Cho and Kim, 2015; Choi, 2015). However, the actual extent
to which the similarities between Ireland and Korea have been exag­
gerated in the FYP literature to fit the argument is open to debate as
Ireland rarely appears in other educational discourses in Korea besides
the FYP. Furthermore, Ireland is not framed as a hyper-competitive
test-driven education system in global discourses, contrary to East
Asian countries.
The above patterns suggest that there are differences in terms of how
frequently references appear and which references are selected (popular
or less well-known). The more critical and mainstream HSCP affecting
high school students and directly associated with college entrance
exams, strove to obtain legitimacy based on popular and authoritative
sources of references for widespread acceptance. On the other hand, the
FYP less directly relevant to the college entrance exam affecting younger
middle school students outside of the school curriculum, relied on less
frequent referencing and the selection of more exotic and less popular
reference countries. However, we argue that authority may be attributed
even to less popular references by being associated with official sources,
which cited the same, small number of studies amplifying the voice of
the government and creating an echo-chamber effect (Goldie et al.,
2014). In the case of the FYP, this pattern is noticeable as the Irish
Transition Year, Denmark’s Afterschool program (Efterskole), Sweden’s
Work experience program (PRAO), and UK’s Gap year appear
mentioned in the 2013 key government blueprint appear repeatedly as
key references justifying the implementation of the FYP.
The legitimacy provided by external sources is important, and we

7
S. Kim et al.
note that most articles did not question the widespread practice of
referencing other education systems as they tended to portray the cited
reference societies as ultimate models to follow for Korea. Learning/
modeling and Authority were the two most frequent reasons provided for
the referencing practice. Using references as Illustrative examples in order
to take into account what other countries were doing in detail to inform
domestic decisions was also a very frequent approach, and highlights the
widespread practice of conducting case studies of foreign cases when
implementing a domestic policy in Korea. Similarity emerged as justifi­
cation for referencing, echoing Phillips and Och’s (2004) model where
shared cultural and historical affinities may play a positive role in
cross-national attraction. This echoes the cross-national attractions be­
tween UK and US education models in the 1990s (Finegold et al., 1992;
Halpin and Troyna, 1995). Alternatively, Competition could be a motive
for referencing, whereby Korea viewed the reference countries as sour­
ces of competition in its efforts to globalize.
We found that although the 11 themes we identified in the beginning
framing both the FYP and HSCP discourse overlapped, the ways in which
they were connected with the various reference countries across both
policies diverged. For instance, curriculum diversity that emerged as a
central theme to both policies, was connected most strongly with
Ireland, Sweden, Denmark in the FYP sample. However, this same theme
was connected with US, Finland, and Germany in the HSCP sample. Our
study thus demonstrates how the same borrower country (Korea) can
develop a repertoire of varying reference societies depending on the
specific policy in question (FYP or HSCP). This illustrates that refer­
encing practices are not always driven by the domestic or local context
only (i.e., cross-national attraction), and may be more program-
dependent (i.e., cherry-picking similar programs to justify the imple­
mentation of the current policy/program). We argue that a combination
of both approaches may be employed depending on the nature of the
domestic policy/program in question, and reference countries may be
opportunistically selected rather than driven by particular cross-
national attraction or logic.
Such opportunistic and circumstantial tendency may be accentuated
in local contexts that are highly responsive to external sources of au­
thority such as Korea, where rapid economic development accompanied
by globalization anxieties have created a climate ripe for heavy
borrowing. We extend Steiner-Khamsi’s (2014) analogy and refer to this
as the ‘hungry octopus’ whose arm is wide-reaching as they sometimes
latch onto references that seem removed from the original policy
agenda, such as the Irish education system as a comparable benchmark
for Korea, UK’s selective Gap year which is very different from the
Korean top-down FYP, or Japan’s unit system that is distinct from
Korea’s HSCP but are cited nonetheless as references. As a result of this
opportunistic tendency, we found a broad range of referenced countries
that have rarely been examined as reference societies for Korea in past
literature, including Germany, Canada, Australia, IB, Japan, France,
Singapore, Sweden, Denmark, China, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Ireland,
and Israel for both the FYP and the HSCP. The wide-ranging nature of
the references illustrates the active referencing practices of Korean
educational discourses that opportunistically grab onto the closest arm
of the octopus.
Overall, our study expands the definition of ‘local policy context’
when thinking about borrowing and referencing practices. Turning
outwards to justify and legitimize domestic pursuits is practiced to the
extreme in our study as we observe how one single reference country can
don multiple hats depending on the policy-dependent needs of the
borrower country at the time. The extent to which the domestic climate
shapes attitudes towards external sources of references and the active
grabbing tendencies of the octopus need be examined in future studies as
the variety and wide-ranging nature of referencing practices has been
understudied up to date. The quantification of referencing patterns does
present limits as it does not clarify its mechanisms or provide in-depth
perspective on the local context, but such analysis had the potential to
capture broad patterns of referencing and allow for comparisons as
8
International Journal of Educational Development 86 (2021) 102475
shown in our study. We further note the recent emergence of a critical
and reflexive attitude in the Korean scholarship towards its own refer­
encing practices, signaling a shift towards more complex and nuanced
referencing practices in the Korean context worthy of future
investigation.
Authors’ contribution statement
Sungwon Kim: Conceptualization, methodology, formal analysis,
writing- original draft, review & editing, supervision. Subeen Jang:
Methodology, formal analysis, investigation, visualization, writing- re­
view & editing. Minjoo Chong: Methodology, formal analysis, investi­
gation, visualization, writing- review & editing.
Funding
This work was supported by the Yonsei University Research Grant of
2021.
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary material related to this article can be found, in the
online version, at doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2021.10
2475.
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