Objectives This paper investigate whether the PISA rankings have resulted in the shifting of USA and high ranking countries referential status in South Korea education.
 Methods For the purposes of analysis, media representation and the number of articles of referential countries education in South Korea is analyzed by using a newspaper holding a high market share and diverse viewpoints from three time periods: two years before and after the first PISA release and for the last two years.
 Results Referential countries are diversified from only two countries, USA and Japan, after PISA in elementary and secondary education. Articles have much less detail about USA education. USA losing considerably slowly its status as a reference point for Korea education and the pattern of Japan articles has peculiarity.
 Conclusions The results of this study imply that the pattern of external referencing in media representation is affected by not only PISA but also historical, political, and cultural experiences in the case of South Korea. The world university ranking, meanwhile, has even bigger impact than PISA and cultural experience in a university education.
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