Environmental education policies in Korea: the scopes and issues of institutionalization

This article examines environmental education (EE) policies in Korea, highlighting the country’s efforts to institutionalize EE through legislation, plans, and the integration of environmental content into the national curriculum. By analyzing interrelated policy instruments across national and regional levels, the study explores policies across both formal and non-formal settings, following the full policy cycle from legislation and implementation to evaluation. The study addresses the structural challenges in aligning EE policies across the education and environmental sectors, emphasizing the roles of regional EE ordinances and the establishment of EE centers at multiple administrative levels. While the Environmental Education Act promotes both formal and non-formal EE, the other policies administered by the Ministry of Education exert more direct influence on school-based practices. A key challenge identified is balancing the demand for high-quality EE standards with the need to accommodate diverse practices emerging from different educational contexts. Korea’s approach illustrates how inter-ministerial coordination, institutional infrastructure, and policy adaptation can support the sustainable implementation of EE. Moving beyond a descriptive account, the findings generate analytical insights into how governance structures and divided authority shape the trajectory of institutionalization. These perspectives, particularly within the socio-political context of East Asia, provide analytically transferable patterns for other countries seeking to strengthen EE governance and advance institutionalization, offering lessons for integrating EE effectively across national, regional, and local levels while acknowledging the limits of policy borrowing.