Creative Economy, Global Leaders, and the Liberal Arts

On April 9, 2014, the article “Shinsegae turns to humanities” appeared in the Korea JoongAng Daily, reporting on the conglomerate’s efforts to promote liberal arts studies in Korean universities. According to Chung Yong-jin, vice chairman of the Shinsegae Group, the company’s emphasis on humanities, which aims “to nurture future leaders with liberal arts knowledge,” is reflective of its “management philosophy o‘f designing’ and influencing consumers’ lifestyles.” Shinsegae’s aspiration to foster more creative and critical thinkers is seemingly indicative of a larger trend currently impacting Korean higher education, that of advocating the liberal arts as a means for producing workers who will more effectively contribute to the growth of the new “creative economy,” thereby enhancing the nation’s international prestige. But in treating humanistic inquiry as a means to such ends, instead of an end in itself, these initiatives led by business leaders and government officials conflict with an integral dimension of the liberal arts ethos, which has, for much of the past century, seen its mission as preserving a crucial space of critical inquiry and cultural memory amidst the rising tide of conformism and consumerism. That is, humanistic disciplines have tended to provide university students with the critical tools, precisely, to resist the “designing and influencing” of their lives by industry and media. This paper, then, proposes to examine the tensions arising from justifications of the liberal arts in terms of transferable skills, marketability, and economic growth and its actual pedagogical praxis; in doing so, it will suggest ways in which we might reframe the question of ends and means as they pertain to the liberal arts, while stressing the need, especially in a Korean context, for it to reaffirm the value of singularity and reinvent its emphasis upon the qualitative dimensions of life.