한국어 교육

About 한국어 교육

한국어 교육 (Journal of Korean Language Education) — Full Profile

한국어 교육, published in English as the Journal of Korean Language Education and abbreviated JKLE, is the open-access, peer-reviewed journal of the International Association for Korean Language Education (IAKLE), the scholarly society for the teaching and learning of Korean. Established in 1989, it is the longest-running specialist journal in its field: a quarterly forum for research on how Korean is taught, learned, assessed and supported by policy, in Korea and around the world. The association states that the journal holds the highest impact factor and citation standing among Korean language education journals in Korea, and the journal has been a registered journal of the National Research Foundation of Korea since 2005 and an indexed title in the Korea Citation Index (KCI). For teachers, curriculum designers, assessment specialists and researchers of Korean as a second or foreign language, JKLE is the field's central scholarly record.

This profile brings together the verified facts about the journal in one place: its identifiers and their correct attribution, its history from a 1989 foundation to quarterly publication, its owning association, its aims and scope as the association states them, its peer-review and open-access model, its place in the Korean national research system, practical guidance for authors, and answers to frequent questions — including a necessary note about a conflicting ISSN that circulates in secondary listings for a journal of a similar English name. Where a detail could not be verified from the association's own pages, this profile says so rather than guessing.

At a Glance

History: From 1989 to a Quarterly Journal

The association's own chronology gives the journal an unusually well-documented development path. 한국어 교육 was established in 1989, at the end of a decade in which Korean language teaching was professionalising inside Korea's universities and beginning its long expansion abroad. In 1998 the journal became a biannual publication. In 2001 it was selected as a candidate journal for registration by the National Research Foundation of Korea, and in the same period its indexing in the Korea Citation Index began — the two national milestones that mark a Korean journal's entry into the country's formal research-evaluation system. In 2003 publication increased to three issues a year. In 2005 the journal achieved full status as a registered journal of the National Research Foundation of Korea. In 2010 it moved to quarterly publication, the frequency it maintains today. From 2012 to 2017, and again in later cycles including 2019, 2020 and 2024, it was selected for the National Research Foundation of Korea's Academic Journal Support Project, the competitive national programme that funds the development of Korean scholarly journals. Between 2016 and 2020 it also published an annual English special edition, an explicit bridge to the international readership that the global growth of Korean language learning was creating.

Read as a whole, that timeline explains the journal's position. Each step — candidate registration, full registration, KCI indexing, repeated national support-project selection — is a competitive, externally judged milestone in the Korean system, not a self-declaration. A journal does not hold registered status for two decades, or win repeated support-project selection, without sustaining the editorial standards those programmes audit. At the same time, the growth in frequency from two issues a year to four tracks the growth of the field itself: the worldwide expansion of Korean language education, driven by Korea's cultural and economic presence, continually enlarged the community of researchers the journal serves, in Korea and in the many countries where Korean is now taught.

The Owning Association

The publisher is the International Association for Korean Language Education (IAKLE; in Korean, 국제한국어교육학회) — the field's scholarly society, whose journal this is. Society ownership matters for how the journal behaves. Its purpose is the advancement of Korean language education as a discipline: the journal exists to circulate research among the association's community of university teachers, language-institute instructors, graduate researchers and policy specialists, and to set the scholarly standard for that community's work. The association presents JKLE as an open-access academic journal freely accessible to all readers, and sustains it through the national support structures described above rather than through reader subscriptions or author charges; no article processing charge is stated on the association's journal pages consulted for this profile, and authors should confirm the current position on fees with the association before submitting, since a formal fee schedule is not published there.

The association's international name reflects the field's geography. Korean language education happens wherever Korean is learned: in Korea's university language institutes and multicultural and immigrant education programmes, and in universities, schools and cultural centres across Asia, North America, Europe and beyond. JKLE's authorship and subject matter follow that map — studies of learners and classrooms in Japan, for example, appear in its pages alongside research conducted in Korea — and its earlier English special editions were an explicit invitation to that worldwide community to read and cite the journal's Korean-language scholarship.

Aims and Scope

The association states the journal's aim directly: established in 1989, JKLE is a peer-reviewed journal dedicated to exploring a wide range of topics within Korean language education, providing a forum for in-depth research and scholarly discourse that integrates the latest theories and findings from related fields — the humanities, linguistics, Korean linguistics and education — and aims to offer academically rigorous and practical solutions to the diverse challenges encountered in the field. The Journals World subject record for the title points the same way, summarising its coverage as EFL/ESL-style teaching and learning research applied to Korean, second language acquisition and learning, linguistics and language analysis, linguistic education and pedagogy, and the syntax, semantics and phonetics that underpin Korean teaching.

The association enumerates the journal's coverage in a topic list that authors should treat as the definitive scope statement. It includes: the second language acquisition of Korean; theories and methodologies for teaching and learning Korean; curriculum design and development for Korean language education; research and development of Korean language teaching materials; the use of linguistic resources and data in Korean education; Korean language assessment and testing; policy research on Korean language education; Korean language teacher training and professional development; learner characteristics and learning strategies in Korean language education; media in Korean language education; and contrastive analysis of Korean with other languages together with its pedagogical applications. That list is notable for its completeness across the chain of language education — from how Korean is acquired, through how it is taught, resourced and assessed, to how its teachers are trained and its programmes governed — and a manuscript that sits squarely on one of its items begins with a strong scope claim.

Two published studies illustrate the range in practice. A genre analysis of newspaper articles for Korean language education built corpora from textbook articles and authentic newspaper texts, measured sentence length and vocabulary patterns in each, and found that textbook sentences ran longer and more complex than newspaper prose while time-related vocabulary typical of real articles was scarce in textbooks; the study closed with concrete suggestions for developing reading materials that reflect authentic genres. A review of discourse studies in Korean language education surveyed a decade of the journal's neighbouring literature and mapped its subjects, methods and data — finding discourse function, pattern, marker and structure at the centre, corpus analysis and surveys as the dominant methods, and a strong emphasis on spoken and semi-spoken data — effectively charting where discourse research can most usefully support communication teaching. Needs analyses for special-purpose curricula, such as Korean for medical-tourism coordinators, also appear: work that starts from learners' occupational tasks and derives curriculum priorities from them. The pattern across all of these is the journal's signature — research that is simultaneously scholarly in method and directed at the improvement of teaching practice.

Peer Review and Quality Standing

JKLE is a peer-reviewed journal, and the association describes its standard in strong terms: through a rigorous peer-review process, the journal publishes only those research articles that demonstrate verified academic excellence. The claim is backed by the journal's external credentials. Registered-journal status with the National Research Foundation of Korea, held since 2005, is conditional on maintaining exactly such processes under national audit, and KCI indexing makes the journal's citation record visible within the system Korean universities use for evaluation. The association further states that the journal holds the highest impact factor and citation index among Korean language education journals in Korea — a claim this profile attributes to the association, as the publishing society's own assessment of its journal's standing in its national field, rather than as an independently audited metric. Authors evaluating the journal for Korean institutional purposes should consult the current KCI record for the title under its ISSNs, where the operative national data is maintained.

International authors should understand what this standing does and does not imply. JKLE's authority is national and field-specific: within Korean language education, and within Korea's research system, it is the leading specialist outlet. It is not presented by its association as a Scopus or Web of Science title, and no such listing is asserted here; authors who need those indexes for institutional reporting should check the current source lists directly. Conversely, authors whose institutions recognise KCI-registered journals — as Korean institutions do, and as many Asian universities increasingly do for area and language studies — will find JKLE's credentials exactly aligned with their requirements.

Open Access and How Readers Reach the Journal

The association describes JKLE as an open-access academic journal, freely accessible to all readers, and the Journals World record likewise lists the title as open access. Its articles circulate through the Korean scholarly infrastructure as well as the association's own site: article records and back content are held in Korean services such as Korea Science and eArticle, where the journal's coverage is recorded from 2001 onward and current volumes — the journal was in its twenty-seventh volume in its recent KCI-era numbering within those services' records — continue to appear. For an international reader, the practical route is the association's website (iakle.com), whose English pages present the journal, its ISSNs and its history, and from which the journal's content and submission information can be reached. The journal's primary language of publication is Korean, reflecting its community; the English special editions published annually from 2016 to 2020 were a time-limited bridge, and authors planning an English-language submission should confirm the journal's current position with the association rather than assuming the special-edition route remains open.

An Identifier Warning: Two ISSN Stories

Careful identification matters for this journal, because secondary sources circulate a conflicting identifier. The association's own journal page — the authoritative source — gives ISSN 1225-6137 for the print edition and ISSN 2713-847X for the online edition, and those are the ISSNs carried in the Journals World record for 한국어 교육. Some third-party listing pages, however, attach the print ISSN 1227-8823 to the English name "Journal of Korean Language Education". That number does not appear on the association's page for this journal and does not match this journal's record; it belongs to a different listing that shares the generic English title. The Korean title 한국어 교육, the publisher IAKLE, and the ISSN pair 1225-6137 / 2713-847X together identify this journal unambiguously. Anyone verifying a citation, a library holding or an indexing claim should check those three elements together, and treat any record that pairs this journal's name with 1227-8823 as a conflation to be corrected, not as evidence about this title. No conflicting publisher or country data was found for the journal itself: association, country and ISSNs are consistent across the association's pages, Korean article services and the Journals World record.

Who Should Publish Here

JKLE is the natural home for researchers whose subject is the teaching and learning of Korean: applied linguists working on the second language acquisition of Korean; teachers and teacher-educators studying classroom method, learner strategies and learner characteristics; curriculum and materials developers with evaluated designs to report; assessment specialists working on Korean proficiency testing; corpus and discourse researchers whose findings bear on Korean pedagogy; contrastive linguists drawing pedagogical conclusions from comparisons between Korean and other languages; and policy researchers addressing how Korean language education is organised, funded and expanded, in Korea or abroad. Graduate students in Korean language education will also find the journal's archive the single best map of what the field has studied and how.

The journal is not a general linguistics outlet: a study of Korean syntax, semantics or phonetics belongs here when its argument connects to education — to acquisition, teaching, materials or assessment — and not otherwise, however strong the linguistics. Nor is it a venue for Korean literature or general Korean studies without a language-education core. That focus is the source of its authority: every article in its pages is there because it helps someone teach or learn Korean better, and authors who frame their contribution in those terms speak the journal's language from the first page.

Preparing a Submission

Detailed submission requirements are maintained by the association and should be taken from its website at the time of submission; the association's journal pages confirm the framework within which authors work — a peer-reviewed, quarterly, open-access journal publishing research across the topic list set out above, with the field's centre of gravity in Korean-language scholarship. Authors should prepare manuscripts to the association's current author instructions, expect rigorous review against the standard the association describes, and allow for the journal's quarterly rhythm when planning around degree, promotion or project deadlines. International authors should confirm two practical points with the association in advance: the current arrangements for English-language manuscripts, following the conclusion of the annual English special editions in 2020, and the current position on any submission or publication fees, which the association's public journal pages do not state. Both confirmations are quick, and both prevent the misunderstandings that arise when authors rely on third-party directory summaries — including, on the identifier question discussed above, summaries that attach the wrong ISSN to the journal's name.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is 한국어 교육?

It is the Journal of Korean Language Education (JKLE), the peer-reviewed, open-access journal of the International Association for Korean Language Education, established in 1989 and published quarterly since 2010, covering the acquisition, teaching, curriculum, materials, assessment, teacher education and policy of Korean language education.

What are its ISSNs?

Print ISSN 1225-6137 and online ISSN 2713-847X, as given on the association's own journal page and in the Journals World record. A different number, 1227-8823, circulates in some third-party listings under the same English title; it is not this journal's ISSN.

Who publishes it?

The International Association for Korean Language Education (IAKLE), the scholarly society for Korean language education, based in South Korea.

Is it peer-reviewed and nationally recognised?

Yes. The association describes a rigorous peer-review process, and the journal has been a registered journal of the National Research Foundation of Korea since 2005 and is indexed in the Korea Citation Index, with repeated selection for the national Academic Journal Support Project.

Is it open access?

Yes — the association describes JKLE as an open-access journal freely accessible to all readers, and its content circulates through Korean scholarly services as well as the association's site.

How often does it appear?

Quarterly, since 2010. It began in 1989, became biannual in 1998 and moved to three issues a year in 2003 before the quarterly schedule.

What topics does it cover?

Second language acquisition of Korean; teaching and learning theories and methodologies; curriculum design; teaching materials research and development; linguistic resources and data in Korean education; assessment and testing; policy research; teacher training; learner characteristics and strategies; media in Korean education; and contrastive analysis with pedagogical applications.

Does it publish in English?

The journal's primary language is Korean. It published an annual English special edition from 2016 to 2020; authors considering an English manuscript should confirm the current arrangements with the association.

Summary

한국어 교육 — the Journal of Korean Language Education — is the established scholarly centre of its field: founded in 1989 by what is now the International Association for Korean Language Education, quarterly since 2010, peer-reviewed to a standard its association describes as admitting only verified academic excellence, registered with the National Research Foundation of Korea since 2005, indexed in the Korea Citation Index, repeatedly selected for national journal support, and open access to all readers. Identified by ISSN 1225-6137 (print) and 2713-847X (online) — and not by the 1227-8823 that some listings mistakenly attach to its English name — it serves everyone whose research helps the world teach and learn Korean, from acquisition theory to classroom practice and national policy.