Exploring the relationship between sustainability and human rights: ecological transition education and its relevance to students’ human rights in South Korean education

Abstract This research explores the integrated dialectic between human rights education and education for sustainability in the context of global crises, including climate change and unexpected pandemics. The authors examine disparities between students’ rights and citizenship education in South Korean educational policies, questioning their lack of alignment concerning sustainability. To address this issue, we adopted a document analysis of two key educational policies introduced by the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education (SMOE), South Korea: the Development Plan for Ecological Transition Education (implemented since 2020) and the Master Plan for Students’ Human Rights (implemented since 2018). These documents were analyzed through the lens of transformative education, specifically drawing on the Freirean ecopedagogy approach. Our analysis of the transformative educational dimensions embedded in these policies reveals a tendency to emphasize one aspect of citizenship for sustainability—either rights or responsibilities—rather than integrating both. Based on these findings, we argue that both policies should more explicitly address the interconnectedness between civic and moral responsibilities and individuals’ inner cognition as moral and political agents. Ultimately, we propose that for a new paradigm of human-nature relations to influence existing discourses in South Korea, these two policies should not be treated separately. Instead, they should be integrated to cultivate moral and political agents based on cosmopolitan citizenship, centered on ecology and human rights, and emphasizing the reciprocal cycle of valuing both responsibility and rights.