Students’ “studying” is one of the most frequent discourses In the Korean educational reality. However the intrinsic value of studying is not so much taken into serious account as the instrumental value of that. This is probably because “studying” became a means of competition for credential, i.e., schooling career. This means that the credential came to be regarded as an index of social status in the Korean society. As a result, the credentialism appeared to have ideological nature, which could lead to the distortion of the educational reality and perspective. In this respect, this study was an attempt to investigate the ideological nature of credentialism in the Korean education by reviewing the previous relevant literature and by applying Marvin Harris’ cultural materialistic perspective to explaining it. The previous literature on Korean credentialism was analyzed with the focus on such topics as the social status competition among individuals or groups, the socio-cultural aspects of ardent educatioanl wishes, the educational competition triggered by social structure, and the over-expansion of private education sector. As the credentialism in Korean society was put into analysis on the ground of Harris’ cultural materialistic perspective comprising behavioral-mental and etic-emic approaches, it proved to have the ideological nature in the sense that the credential, i.e., schooling career, was mystified in terms of different explanations about the educational reality between etic and ernie points of view. In addition, Harris' infrastructure determinism was assumed to be theoretically applicable to making clear the forming process of the educational ideology of credentialism in the Korean educational reality and ascertained with its deterministic direction.