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The Hankyoreh
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The official account of South Korea's leading voice in progressive, independent journalism — now in English.
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October 30, 2025 at 3:15 PM
hankyoreh.bsky.social
Michael Sandel on how center-left parties have given rise to a sense of abandonment among people with less, or less elite, educations.

english.hani.co.kr/arti/english...
In the meantime, these parties valorized and emphasized education as the answer to wage stagnation and inequality. If you want to compete and win in the global economy, they told their voters, go get a degree, because what you earn will depend on what you learn. So not only did they enact the deregulation of the financial industry, the free flow of capital across borders, and the outsourcing of jobs to low-wage countries, they also valorized higher education. But they missed the insult implicit in their advice, which was this: “If you’re struggling in the new economy and you didn’t get a degree, your failure must be your fault. You didn’t do what we urged you to do.” It’s no wonder that working people without college degrees turned against center-left parties. And here again, I’m speaking of the US and Europe. There may be other factors at play in South Korea, but in general, these changes over this four- to five-decade period make it understandable that working people would feel abandoned by the parties that traditionally represented them.
September 24, 2025 at 8:40 AM