This study was conducted to identify what are the life skills as quality standards of human resources in the era of knowledge-based society and to investigate strategies for quality management of life-long learning system. Life skill is defined as core competencies needed to be developed for one's life in this study. Thus, it was classified into basic literacy, key competencies, citizenship, and specific vocational skills based on literature review of previous research, the examples of developed countries and social and economic situation in Korea. Four types life skills were all elaborated over the learning stages with different emphasis. Also, the need of life skills and tasks for educational system was surveyed by experts and opinion leaders and they empathized it. Based on results of this study, we were able to induce several policy implications as follows: First, we need to adopt a concept of national learning targets that mean critical competency level to achieve at a certain developmental stage of life. Second, required competencies and standards of achievement level at each stage should be identified. Finally, successful launch of this approach needs preparation such as social agreement on the importance of competency-based education, the establishment of integrating system that connect education and credentials.