In the Republic of Korea, elementary schools provide compulsory education to children between the ages of six and eleven. Students ages 12-14 attend middle school, and high schools offer three years of upper secondary education to students ages 15-17. This report describes the design of the science education program in South Korea, highlighting the revisions in the national curriculum from 1963 to the present. Particular attention is paid to the most recent curricular revision, which took place in 1980. The principal guideline for this revision was to move away from John Dewey's life-centered curriculum to a discipline-centered one, which focuses on the structure of scientific knowledge, process skills and inquiry. This document presents some of the problems and issues facing South Korean science educators as a result of the 1980 revision. These include the claims that: (1) little of the science curriculum deals with applied fields and topics of practical utility; (2) opportunities to enhance creative problem-solving abilities are very limited; (3) few chances exist to integrate technological advances and real life situations into science learning; and (4) the current curriculum overlooks the various problems of the social and environmental impacts a highly industrialized society. Recommendations designed to help rectify these problems are presented. (TW)