{"id":1897,"date":"2026-03-08T11:04:05","date_gmt":"2026-03-08T02:04:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/inequality.kr\/en\/?p=1897"},"modified":"2026-03-08T11:04:05","modified_gmt":"2026-03-08T02:04:05","slug":"koreas-meritocracy-its-past-present-and-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/inequality.kr\/en\/2026\/03\/08\/koreas-meritocracy-its-past-present-and-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Korea\u2019s Meritocracy: Its Past, Present, and Future"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Colloquium in February 2026<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Sang-soo Chang (Sunchon University)<\/strong><!-- notionvc: b95c0768-4058-4249-a1ec-6c49bbcb1db5 --><\/p>\n<p>Meritocracy is not a concept that explains the inequality, but an ideology that justifies it. Industrial society is not as meritocratic as we might think, a fact that can be proven logically and empirically.<\/p>\n<p>Empirical data show that meritocracies in Western Europe, the United States, and Korea were emerged during a certain stage of industrialization: a period of rapid expansion of the public and private sectors, followed by the increase in entrance of children from the lower middle class into the upper middle class.<\/p>\n<p>However, meritocracy ceased to expand further, as each country entered an era of low growth. Unless more high-quality, stable jobs are provided, it seems unlikely that meritocracy will regain its former vitality in the future.<!-- notionvc: 2a4d4270-d14d-47df-b719-8a1608364766 --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Colloquium in February 2026 Sang-soo Chang (Sunchon University) Meritocracy is not a concept that explains the inequality, but an ideology that justifies it. Industrial society is not as meritocratic as we might think, a fact that can be proven logically and empirically. Empirical data show that meritocracies in Western Europe, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1898,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[81,97,23],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/inequality.kr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1897"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/inequality.kr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/inequality.kr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/inequality.kr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/inequality.kr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1897"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/inequality.kr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1897\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1899,"href":"http:\/\/inequality.kr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1897\/revisions\/1899"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/inequality.kr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/inequality.kr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/inequality.kr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/inequality.kr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}