on, but it is not a legislative organ. It cannot pass laws. So discussion may be conducted at the table of negotiation, but resolutions are not laws.
While the main item differentiating the Tripartite Commission from previously attempted social dialogue models is the requirement for consensus, resulting in the paralysis of many discussed items and in turn, government has unilaterally taken steps to pass policies to suit its overall goals. There is a chronic lack of trust between members who have only associated in the past according to relationships based on hierarchies. The mistrust is also garnered from a history of ‘policy means to impose controls over organised labour’s demands and resistance, rather than promoting a democratic process of tripartite consultation and administer- ing its balanced outcomes’ (Lee B. H. 1999). The essence of negotiation is based of a complex body of rules that are both formal and informal, and the Commission as an institution was invented as a means to find consent between all three parties represented at the meetings. This nonetheless did not prevent government representatives from using historically repeated behaviour of imposing its authority and enacting policies. So the government typically has behaved as more of an authoritarian leader than a democratic entity at Commission forums.
vocational training in 1997’ designed to promote attractiveness of VET for all entrants to the job market (KRIVET/NCVER 2001: 58).
New VET programmes were classified into ‘initial training; upgrade training; and job transfer training’ for re-employment of workers. Initial training was most often recommended for newly laid-off workers and involved general education co-ordinated with practical training, and secondly, basic training in knowledge and skills common to related occupations given by a training institution. Thirdly, initial training involved the cultivation and specialisation in knowledge and skills for
‘employability’ in the age of inflexibility. The new VET programmes are
‘employment-maintenance’ and ‘employment-promotion’; introduced to provide compensation for laid-off workers (OECD 2000: 96–97) and an unprecedented chance for workers to take responsibility for employability itself.
For ‘employment stabilisation’ a few years after the economic crisis, KOILAF recommended specialised VET for unemployed workers most affected by corporate restructuring. In a summary of corporate restructur- ing and employment stabilisation policy released in November 2000 by the Ministry of Labour, specific training was promised at no cost to the worker, and training and food allowances would be distributed nationally.
Training subsidies of up to 1 million won (1,067 USD) were suggested for individuals who desired to pay for training themselves. In 2001, the government claimed that it would prioritise construction and manu- facturing training, and in the earliest period of 2001, it would focus on VET for re-employment (KOILAF 2000b: 4).
These programmes have been emphasised as an important factor in reform of the Korean economy (KOILAF 2000: 26), and are an attempt to mould what Gramsci named organic intellectuals into the ideology of neoliberal capitalism by way of the course material promising renewed employability. The next section discloses shifts taken in the education and research sector, in partnership with the government and international organisations, to accommodate restructuring. VET was expected save workers from the ‘inevitable’ fate of market economies; the trasformismo of workers’ welfare once again came to the fore with the restructuring of VET in the crisis recovery period.
Shift to Knowledge Economy and Elite-led Goals for VET
The production characteristics of the Industrial Age involved mass production and mass consumption, and were more mechanical than
relations now seen in the Information Age. The primary asset base during the Industrial Age lay in capital, labour, and resources, whereas the Information Age’s assets lie in skills, knowledge, and innovation.
Differences to nations’ asset bases and expectations placed on the workforce demonstrate changes required in the context of the historical bloc of neoliberalism, and are manifest in a spreading number of developed and developing economies. Economies of flexibility and speed are reflected in the expectations of the populations that live within those economies and this is reflected in the expectations of labour. The World Bank 1998/99 World Development Report emphasises the role of knowledge for economic advancement and social well being, and heralds the development of a knowledge-based economic growth model as the ultimate goal for sustainable development. So how is this reflected by the need for new kinds of knowledge for employability in the era of labour market flexibility?
In the 1990s and early twenty-first century, specialised, knowledge- based economies became the ideal for nations seeking to compete at the global level. While industrialising economies were grounded in a mode of production of a more material and tangible nature, the neoliberal age has begun to celebrate ‘knowledge’ as the most important qualification for the specialisation of the economy. The new economies are ‘required’ to consolidate the main tenets of neoliberalism and to specialise according to their nationally specific qualities, whether it is human capital or another particular resource. Knowledge-based economies require a technologically driven highly skilled labour force, meaning that workers who are trained into the appropriate industries may be at an advantage to workers within traditional sectors.
So to remain employable in a knowledge economy, workers need to adapt to an entirely new set of codes involved in the production, mediation, and application of knowledge. The Linear Model shown in Figure 5 demonstrates a commonly accepted method of learning, one that is seen within the traditional pedagogical model used by academic institutions.
According to the OECD (2000: 39), this model is outdated and cannot completely prepare workers for Information Age survival. The OECD stresses that this model of learning has been successful in the University, but these stages of progression in linear fashion are gradually becoming less useful for industry. Nonetheless, the model demonstrates three crucial aspects of knowledge that are negotiated in the industries of the Industrial Age.
Figure 5. A Linear Model Knowledge
Production
→
Knowledge Mediation→
Application Knowledge For success in a ‘knowledge economy’, new forms of learning however are important and knowledge is produced via a new set of exchanges, including:• Commercial input to design.
• Feedback from users.
• University-industry interaction.
• Movement of knowledge embodied in people.
• Knowledge management in organisations (OECD 2000: 51).
Particularly around the turn of the millennium, experts began to stress the importance of knowledge for sustainable development. At the World Conference on Science in 1999, UNESCO experts declared that ‘… the future of humankind will become more dependent on the equitable production, distribution, and use of knowledge than ever before’
(UNESCO 1999). The World Bank joined forces and encouraged the
‘entire development community’ to recognise the centrality of knowledge for development. The ‘development community’ was challenged to create the international public goods necessary to help developing nations survive in the knowledge economy (World Bank 1998/1999). Into the twenty-first century, on 20 December 2002, the General Assembly of the United Nations declared the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development beginning on 1 January 2005 (resolution 57/254).3 UNESCO was given the responsibility to act as head agency for the management of a kind of discourse that underpins this decade, and was asked to draft an international implementation scheme. This scheme would include recommendations for VET across nations.
The ownership of intangible goods and services and the knowledge involved in their production drives competition in the ‘new capitalism’.
Workplace requirements have become less directly ‘trainable’ because the outcome is less obviously measured. The result is that workers are becoming increasingly removed and alienated from the final product. This has occurred in several industries, including information and communi- cations and consultancy. Production of intangible goods within these
industries requires new work styles and skills and new partnerships between sectors.
Training programmes began to prompt new forms of consolidation and convergence that would dissolve ‘left-over’ knowledge of cultural norms and practices, and ultimately fragment any terrain for resistance to state-led and internationally informed internationalisation strategies (Cox 1987: 253). New forms of knowledge became commodified assets in the international environment and were translated into Korea’s VET programmes in order to train workers into what were seen as global norms of neoliberalism. Leadbeater believes that state guidance for this process has increased in importance due to ‘its role in producing knowledge, through the education system’ (1998: 379). The top-down relationship between the state and workers, even after the official declaration of democracy in 1987, allowed the state to implement insti- tutions facilitating its neoliberal internationalisation economic drive(s) and to propagate elite and externally led accumulation strategies without consensus. Even since the transition to democracy, the legacy of authori- tarian leadership has not subsided significantly (Kim, S. S. 2003: 39).
The Kim government began to manage unprecedented requirements for curriculum development and content via partnerships with inter- national groups who maintain ownership of what is considered lucrative worker ‘knowledge’ in the contemporary context of neoliberal capitalism.
In order to maintain control and to sideline potential social crises or uprisings in opposition to development strategies, or to initiate trasformismo, the Korean government intended to absorb any fragments of society that posed a threat through providing the means to obtain employable knowledge in the neoliberal economy. A congratulated role for VET programmes evoked the ‘necessity’ of workers’ cross-national convergence of skills for Korea to remain a competitive global economic player. The ‘Goals and Strategies of the National Human Resources Policy’ as depicted by the Republic of Korea in a publication of 2001,
‘Policy Visions and Goals for Korea’s place as a knowledge economy are:
• Strengthening the capacity of individuals.
• Building social trust and cohesion.
• Creating new sources for economic growth (ROK 2001: 22).
The appropriate ‘Policy Areas and Tasks’ for these ‘Visions’ include the task to strengthen cooperation among businesses, universities, and
research institutions for effective VET; and continuing education and training of workers by expanding commercially provided education and establishing technical schools and corporate colleges (22, 28). This government publication stresses that ‘we must increase the opportunity of the low-income groups to receive vocational training through the vocational training for self-rehabilitation and employment promotion’
(43). The government stated that it supports successful participation in training and employment via individualised supervision and by guaran- teeing a decent standard of living by instituting the Law for Guaranteeing Basic Life for All Citizens (43).
‘Making knowledge and human resources the driving force for further growth’ became the priority for restructuring of VET. Goals at this time involved:
• Discovering and educating the gifted children at an early age.
• Developing knowledge and training workers for national strategic areas.
• Innovating the role and function of the university as a new engine for growth.
• Human resources development for upgrading the quality of the service industries.
• Developing professionals to produce knowledge capital (ROK 2001: 50–63).
The infrastructure necessary for these human resources development involved ‘streamlining the system of distributing and managing knowledge’ (ROK 2001: 82).
KRIVET: Institutional Support and Consolidation of Elite-led Development An emerging dynamic between the national and international is seen in hegemonic struggles between social forces engaged in a battle for the establishment of a hegemonic production structure. What is seen in the Korean case is an ascendance of individuals who operate within the criteria of transnational norms by involving themselves with the TCCN.
The network attempts to incorporate subordinate groups of workers into this paradigm by providing certain concessions but deliberately avoiding their political involvement. In the period of restructuring, the Korean government created a research centre specifically for the activity of restructuring work norms within its country to meet transnational
standards. KRIVET employs several researchers who are required to support, intellectually, the government’s internationalisation initiatives within VET. The case study in further chapters discusses just one element of the elite-driven network that is expanding across the globe.
But perhaps the most important evidence of the government’s attempts to reorganise according to supposedly immutable demands of expansive neoliberal capitalism is seen in the formation of organic intellectuals within one research institute. On 9 February 1996, the establishment of an unprecedented Korea Research Institute for Vocational Education and Training (KRIVET) was proposed as a part of the Educational Reform for the Construction of a New Vocational Education System. By 27 March of the next year, the KRIVET Act (Act. No.5315) went into affect.
The Institute was then founded on 10 September 1997 as a government funded institution, just as the economic crisis erupted across Asia. Since 1997 KRIVET has controlled vocational education and human resources, and composed curricula that complimented the government’s reform and recovery strategies. Researchers such as those working within KRIVET are increasingly part of an international network of institutions: Cox states that ‘… elite talent from peripheral countries is co-opted into international institutions in the manner of trasformismo’ (1983: 173).
The MOL subsidised KRIVET with the aim to ‘strengthen the vocational training system, in order to produce skilled manpower to meet changing industrial demands’ (KOILAF 1999c: 108). In 1997, the MOL integrated a new form of vocational training programmes into formal education, and took over private vocational training institutions. At its inception, researchers within the Institute were asked to focus on the practical aspects of vocational training and not to explore the theoretical side of the issue. Later however, an increasing volume of international experts began to participate in the Institute’s activities, as is discussed later in this section.
KRIVET has acted as a type of consulting firm for the government; as government ministries in South Korea typically enjoy a supplementary research institute of similar calibre. KRIVET’s first responsibility was to give guidelines for qualification and background for the developing curriculum of vocational training in South Korea. Later, more responsibilities were placed on researchers having to do with comparative research projects, international performance standards analyses, and other data accumulation activities.
The Centre in Seoul has formed partnerships with the OECD, the ILO
and APEC. The dialogue between these institutions and KRIVET is intended to integrate Korea into the extensive networks that now exist for VET conformity across nations.4 There are partner organisations across the globe including the Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches sur les Qualifications (CEREQ) in France; National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER) in Australia; Central Institute of Vocational and Technical Education (CIVTE) in China and General Organisation for Technical Education and Vocational Training (GOTEVOT) in Saudi Arabia (ILO 2001).
While neoliberal globalization takes particular characteristics in these diverse locations, there are cross-case expectations of nationally based workers, as put forward by members of the TCCN. UNEVOC is one example of an entity attempting to expand ideologies with a universal and essentialist tone, and sets the groundwork for the formulation of universalist convergence expectations. In 2002, the Seoul based UNEVOC Centre is involved not just with training programme design and co-ordination, but also conducts Korean vocational research that aids policy-making, training programme development, and the Centre considers individual workers’
qualifications to permit national authorisation. Kang, S. H. emphasises the importance of worker preparation schemes for global competition within an international Knowledge Economy.
The emergence of the knowledge-based society provides not only windows of opportunities, but also brings about uncertainty and greater challenges. Based on the bi-polarisation hypothesis about the knowledge-based society, the performance of knowledge may be much less than desirable in under-developed countries. As a result, these countries may experience an ever-widening knowledge gap compared to developed countries, due to an inadequate infra- structure for the expansion and application of knowledge, and due to a less competitive knowledge level.
(Kang, S. H. 2000: 101) KRIVET assumed the responsibility for worker training at the direction of the Ministry of Education and the MOL, and on 18 October 2000 it was inaugurated as the UNESCO Regional Centre of Excellence in Technical and Vocational Education and Training. KRIVET thus was transformed into one of the offices of the regional UNEVOC5 centre for the Asia Pacific. This occurred as the General Assembly of UNESCO
resolved to reinforce technical and vocational education and training via expansion of its the international program. The head office of UNEVOC was established in Bonn, Germany in September 2000 and has regional centres across the globe. In Seoul, UNEVOC has one main and three associate centres, located in the buildings of the Ministry of Education, in the Local Education Support Bureau and in the office of the Industrial Education Policy Officer at Korea Manpower Agency, and KRIVET.
So as a direct response to the economic crisis, the government took over all areas of vocational training at the same time as it established a partnership with UNESCO to formulate new curricula for general workers training. This was partly in response to the influx of MNCs who entered the economy rapidly in response to deregulation requirements;
companies whose ‘colonisation’ of Korean industries required a particular kind of worker. Knowledge-based industries began to play an increasingly important role in the buoyancy of the Korean economy (Kang 2000: 101), and the workforce was incapable of fully adapting to this transformation.
The government worked specifically with the ILO and UNEVOC to establish government-led, reform oriented VET programs. Whilst Koreans historically had been accustomed to on-site training after beginning a job that also offered lifetime employment, general vocational training within businesses was completely abolished in 1998. Workers were thus expected from 1997 and onward to fulfil government objectives for production and skill acquisition. The top-down nature of recommen- dations for skills acquisition indicates that workers’ participation in development once again was elite-engineered, during the reform period.
The Presidential Commission for Educational Reform (PCER) designed the Second Education Reform Program which involved vocational education reform: the main change being an introduction of the ‘Lifelong Vocational Education System’ (KOILAF 1999c: 108). The Ministers of Labour instigated a campaign of the ‘new labour culture’
(KOILAF 2001: 11; Lee S. R. 1999: 1) (see below) in 1997, which was propagated into the next century. The campaign was designed to introduce new work training programs, involving classes, videos, and literature designed to prepare companies for foreign management and/or new policies. The main thrust was to implement a:
… total shift in perspective among workers and businesses, and the government will be necessary for Korea to compete in the new century, where national borders have lost their significance. Korea
must observe a new paradigm of labour relations in which employers and workers are partners in every sense of the word.
(Lee, S. R.: 1999) Simultaneously, On September 18, 2000, the Labour Reform Task Force was activated, a group chaired by the Vice Labour Minister. The Minister reminded the nation that ‘labour sector reform is crucial to enhance competitiveness of an enterprise and a nation and improve living quality of workers in this era of unbridled competition’ (MOL 1999). The following are some of the bullet points of the task force’s objectives.
• Livelihood Protection Measure
- Innovation in Operation of Job Security Centres and Manpower Banks
- Establishment of a Three Year Plan for Vocational Ability
• Development
- Diversification of labour diplomacy and international exchanges - Formulation of Measures to Expand Inter -Korean Exchanges and - Co-operation in Labour Sector (1999).
The fundamentals of the task force highlight the importance of labour capital and its capabilities in the reform period and articulate the strategies for its education. This process occurs predominantly through government relations with enterprises and most often aims to transform labour to meet premeditated behaviour targets. These new relations meant that the government was to become more deeply involved in VET programmes than ever before, through discourse with the research institute and involved negotiations about the content for skills training itself.
However, workers who are involved in VET programmes must also be convinced that their participation is beneficial to their lives, which is part of the incentive structure provided, and is necessary for trasformismo to be effective. To encourage voluntary participation, the government has offered businesses two forms of support for implementation of the subsidisation for implementation costs to employers, and paid leave for training to employees. This strategy is covered in section 4.5.5 and demonstrates new forms of incentive structure building for participation of employees and the unemployed in VET programmes. The next subsection discusses how the government has restructured VET itself with the vision of a skilled knowledge-based workforce.