Cambodia Development Institute

Lessons on Human Capital Development from Korea for Cambodia
LY Venghong, SHROY Kanann, EANG Sophara
February 13, 2013


Abstract

N¬early all countries around the world so far has strived to enhance their economic capacity including Republic of Korea and Cambodia, and by doing so, there are some factors that can help economic grows faster than usual such as productivities of labor, human capital development, or national policies. However, among the above factors, human capital development is the main contribution toward the growth of each country. Generally accepting, human capital development in Korea is far better than in Cambodia due to the strong policy and the loans that borrowed from World Bank to invest in education, which pushed Korea to move faster than Cambodia does, undoubtedly. Korea has applied the policy on education tightly and that policy, industrial targeted, goes parallel with demand of the economic resources such as skilled labors. Moreover, Korea did borrow loan/credit from World Bank since the late 1960s in order to enhance the educational system to match the demand of skilled labor in the economy. But, Cambodia did not apply policy firmly and did not borrow the loan/credit from World Bank since the dawn as Korea until 1990s. These are lessons that Cambodia should take into account, but it is difficult to apply these lessons on nowadays situation because this would lead to the fundamental reforms of many governmental sectors to match this policy while it also affects the majority of people because industrial targeted which is requisite for developing human capital step-by-step.