Michele Merética Miltons

South Korea experimented a remarkable economic growth the last decades, especially between 1960 and 1996. In 1960, its gross national output per capita was only US$ 80, but, in 1996, was more than US$ 11.000, when it became an OCDE’s member. The growth experience with rates above the average of OCDE countries gives it the title “Asia Tiger”, the same way as its neighbors Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore. The Korea transformation is attributed to interaction of a lot of economic and non economic factors. One of main non economic reason was the education development, which had as base the equal opportunity and access principle, development itself sequentially, during the period 1945-2006. The objective of this research is to check if the South-Korean government gave priority to formal education to help its development projects during its civilian and military governments, in the period 1945-2006. The assumption of this research is that priority was checked, changed only in intensity and form. The main results suggested that, in fact, the government gave priority to education. But in Chun Dae-hwan military government, the educational expansion of high level was a result of popular demand that, historically, saw the achievement of high levels as an important manner of reaching social status and prestige, objective not achieved, in their opinion, through technical and vocational education.