Trade Liberalization of Education Services in Korea

Abstract

ABSTRACT

Education is widely considered as a key factor to economic development for its strong inputs to economic, social and cultural activities. Notwithstanding education has long been considered as a non-tradable public good of individual countries within their borders, international trade regime has introduced the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) under World Trade Organization (WTO) during the Uruguay Round of 1991 which included education service as one of the 12 service sectors eligible to trade. Accordingly, Korea, a member of the WTO, has opened up its territory to the global trade in education services on a small scale following Doha Development Agenda (DDA) and a series of Free Trade Agreement (FTA) during the last decades. The extent of liberalization of education services sector in Korea, however, has not shown much significant progress. Some foreign studies identified several challenges related to the implementation of the GATS commitments. As well, some other Korean studies attempted to analyze negotiation strategies for Koreas Free Trade Agreeents or presented countermeasures against trade liberalization in this sector. On the other hand, few have investigated the current Korean education trade situation following several FTAs of Korea. Consequently, this paper attempts to investigate the actual outcome of the liberalization and also look into the realities of Koreas progress in education liberalization after FTAs. It also aims to identify the trade barriers and policy issues surrounding the Korean education services trade by studying STC-Korea case. In the later part of the thesis, it delves into the cases and examples of Singapore, China, and Japan respectively in order to search for policy implications for Korean education services domain. Based on the implications, this paper concludes that Korea should provide integrated governance to foster institutional framework relevant to the education services liberalization and facilitate socio-economic and educational infrastructure to cope with the era of globalization and internationalization of the education services.