Since the introduction of international achieve-ment assessments, Korea has received a great deal ofglobal attention because of its strong academic perfor-mance achieved at primary and secondary education levels.However, Korea has not fully benefited from theseachievements in education for several reasons as discussedin this paper. The Korean education system is now facedwith challenges that have emerged from these achieve-ments. The purpose of this paper is thus to discuss thecurriculum reforms in Korea, which were undertaken toachieve sustainable success and meet the challenges of thetwenty-first century learning ecology. This paper highlightsthat beneath its high academic performance, the Koreaneducational system faces problems related to students’ lowinterest levels in learning, a declining index of students’happiness, and increasingly deskilled teachers because ofthe prescribed national curriculum. This paper describesthe current shift taking place in the Korean educationalsystem as it move from knowledge delivery to competencydevelopment, from academic excellence to student happi-ness, and from centralized and detailed prescriptions tomore autonomous decision making by teachers in order toovercome these problems and respond actively to twenty-first century learning ecology. In addition, this paper sug-gests that changes must be followed in terms of schoolpractice, teachers’ professional development, and socio-cultural structures as means of achieving these reform

• Curriculum Reform in Korea: Issues and Challenges for Twenty-first Century Learning