Creating systems for lifelong learning in asia

This paper investigates the formation and establishment of lifelong learning support systems in six Asian countries, including Korea, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong(SAR), Thailand, and the Philippines. The countries included in this research are quite diverse and unique in their basic characteristics. Despite the divergent values, systems, and social roles, since the 1990s, the basic ideas and trends have been toward a somewhat integrated model in which each component of the system was geared to function for serving the global knowledge economy. In this paper, the process of recent lifelong learning system development in the selected six Asian countries was traced in two ways: global aspects and local peculiarity. I argued in this paper that the cases in Asia mostly follows the ‘global trends’, especially with the ‘business mind’ of global capitalism. I also suggest that Asian experiences can provide several distinctive characteristics rarely observed elsewhere: new role in mitigating diploma-disease, building centralized supporting system between central and local governments, the impact of colonial legacy, unbalance between HRD and humane-orientations, and preservation of the emphasis of adult basic education.