A Study on the Qualification System within Korea's Machinery Industry
Dong-Im Lee, Deog-Ki Kim, Cheon-Soo Park, Joo-Hee Chang
Fast technological change has also caused changes in the work world, creating new occupations and developing existing jobs. As a result, the skills required by companies from the labor force has also undergone rapid changes. Therefore, the enhancement of individual, corporate, and national competitiveness is predicated on labor, and this regardless of whether they be new job seekers or existing employees, meeting skill requirements.
However, because the Korean educational and qualification markets have lacked the infrastructure needed to detect these changes in the work world, a serious skill mismatch has emerged within the Korean labor market.
In this regard, this research was conducted based on the premise that the qualification system that serves as a linkage between the educational and labor markets can only play a proper role within the Korean labor market when the new skills requires can be precisely identified and forecasted. As such, this study focuses on finding the new skills required based on a review and application of diverse methodologies. Thereafter, this research seeks to predict, based on such methodologies, the new future qualifications that will be required within the machinery industry.
In addition, based on the new skills required, this study extracts not only the new qualifications that should be created, but also the obsolete qualifications that should be either cancelled or unified with similar qualifications.
This study employed various research methods. The main methods employed in this study are as follows. First, a review of the available literature was conducted. Advanced research methodologies related to the identification of new skill requirements and new trends in technology, occupations and qualifications have been developed in leading powers within the global machinery industry such as the USA, Japan, and Germany. The second method utilized was the analysis of job posting advertisements. To this end, job posting ads were examined in order to understand more in detail the skill requirements which companies may have. The third method was that of on-the-spot monitoring and interviews. We visited around ten work places, where we conducted on-the-spot monitoring and interviews during which we analyzed the changes
in technology and work. The fourth method was that of in-depth surveys. The individuals surveyed were employers and managers working in the leading companies in Korea who possessed knowledge about changes in technology and skill requirements. The survey mostly dealt with changes in jobs, occupations, and work organizations. The fifth method was a statistical analysis of the future demand and supply of labor and qualifications. The final method consisted of focus group interviews during which the quality of qualifications' contents was evaluated.
The task of finding new skill requirements is one that requires vast cooperation and the application of diverse research methods. Individual methods should be developed by professional organizations such as KEIS(Korea Employment Information Service), KIET(Korea Institute for Industrial Economics & Trade), SHRDC(Sector HRD Council), and HRD Korea.
This study experienced certain difficulties precisely identifying new skill requirements because of the lack of a proper infrastructure with which to unearth such new skills. To this end, this research has suggested diverse policies with which to establish the infrastructure needed to help ascertain future skill requirements in a systematic and synthetic fashion.
The study, which constitutes an important step in the identification of the new skills required in the machinery industry, not only focuses on new qualifications, but also obsolete qualifications that should be either unified with others or cancelled outright. In this regard, the research methods applied in this study could be used in growth industries such as the green, IT, nano, and automobile industries to identify and resolve their own skill mismatch problem.
