President Park Geun-hye visited America and showed her intention to build Pyeonghwa Park in the DMZ, the symbol of Korea’s national division, in order to convert the most dangerous zone in the world into the most peaceful place. And in March, 2014, ...
President Park Geun-hye visited America and showed her intention to build Pyeonghwa Park in the DMZ, the symbol of Korea’s national division, in order to convert the most dangerous zone in the world into the most peaceful place. And in March, 2014, she unveiled her ‘Dresden Unification Vision’ in Germany and presented concrete measures for cooperation between North and South Korea. However, such policies of hers have not gained any positive responses from North Korea at all.
This means that every policy for national unification should be prepared through reconciliation and cooperation between the two systems. For instance, in Germany, they did not prepare for any social problems regarding the cost of unification to be incurred in the process of integration between East and West Germany or their awareness of difference causing a sense of defeat and sense of inferiority resulted from the difference of their living conditions.
Even if North and South Korea become unified like Germany, the problems that may occur after the unification would be greater than either the conflicts that North and South Korea have been experiencing before the unification or the problems that Germany did experience then. It is because it has been already 60 years since Korea was divided into North and South. During this period, North and South Korea have been exhibiting so much difference and heterogeneity between them in terms of language, society, culture, economy, or history though it has been one nation. Without solving these problems, it would be hard to realize national reunification. And even if we can achieve unification, it is expected that the social problems or cost of unification resulted from that would be even greater than those of Germany.
Within this context, we can see that unification policy should be the one that can cope with those social problems, and it should be based on educational integration. Education is the area that is politically neutral and future-oriented and can be accompanied by peace. And through cooperation for educational integration, we can solve problems that cannot be easily settled down politically. As a matter of fact, research has been diversely conducted for educational integration to cope with unification; however, it has hardly dealt with the integration of the educational administration system which is practically important and has ended up being temporary research though it has been attempted.
Therefore, this study aims to find out ways to build a North and South Korean educational administration system after the unification. For this, the researcher examined Germany’s cases for integration, compared North and South Korean education systems, and investigated the cases of cooperation between them in order to use the data for analysis to provide measures to integrate their educational administration systems.
And the study has found out ways to integrate their educational administration systems as follows: first, as a step to prepare for the educational administration system based on reconciliation and cooperation, it is needed to figure out the current status of North and South Korean educational administration systems. To realize it, it is necessary to conduct joint research and hold conferences regarding their educational administration systems. And those concerned in education in North and South Korea should visit each other and promote personal exchanges aggressively.
Second, as a step to connect their educational administration systems, it is necessary to build educational governance. Regarding the form of educational governance, we can attain educational cooperation with North Korea politically by building North and South Korean government’s and North Korean government’s educational organizations, installing North and South Korean government’s and private institutions’ organizations for educational cooperation, and also achieving cooperation between North and South Korean government and international organizations for the environment of North Korean education.
Third, it is a step to integrate their educational administration systems as a unified nation. In this period, the two systems of North and South Korea form a complete education community and have both central and local integrated educational administration systems. After the abolition of dictatorial government in North Korea, the central educational administration system will maintain its educational function and continue to perform North Korean education. And by reestablishing the public educational official system, it is needed to shorten the period of transition to integrate their educational administration systems. And the local educational administration system should be built in a horizontal, not a longitudinal structure by securing each province’s autonomy, independence, and regionality.