Examining the donor’s motivation of educational aid with a focus on Japan and South Korea

A contemporary global trend in educational development has been placed on basic education as international consensus emphasises. Particularly, an effort for universalisation of basic education has become a prioritised issue in social development field. However, being the only non-Western donors in major donor’s club, Japan and South Korea have been significantly focusing on higher education in their educational aid while little attention is given to basic education in developing countries. Also, empirical research in this paper reveals that a significant level of aid for higher education takes a form of scholarship for university. Having this obvious inconsistency to current international trend, this paper examines the donors’ motivations for emphasising scholarship form of aid with an investigation of the relevance of their own development experience to aid practice. Evidences support that there is a certain degree of linkage between their aid practice and the distinctive experience during industrialisation process, which can validate ‘developmentalist approach’ implied by the governments. On the other hand, however, a series of evidence and research findings suggests that the donors are engaging in scholarship aid in order to achieve network building that is expected to bring about diplomatic benefits to donor countries in a long term. It is also clarified that scholarship aid creates an arena for soft power exercise that significantly contributes to network building, therefore policy goals. Moreover, the overemphasis on such practice- focusing on scholarship aid for the own interest rather than promoting the development of local educational institutions- generates the dependency of recipients on knowledge production and reinforces the existing dependency. Thus, this paper looks at the contradiction of ‘development assistance’.