Abstract

This study aims to analyze the research trends of English-language journals in Korean studies published in Korea. Data were collected from four English journals in Korean studies indexed in A&HCI and SCOPUS. A total of 1,840 were selected, including 768 articles of the Korea Journal, 466 articles of The Review of Korean Studies, 285 articles of the Seoul Journal of Korean Studies, and 321 articles of the Acta Koreana, in connection with content analysis, author analysis, author keyword frequency analysis, and topic modeling. In results, the domain research of Korean studies is Humanities, followed by Social Science, and Arts and Kinesiology. These three sectors have grown significantly in publishing numbers since 2000. The subject period of the study is in the order of the modern period, late Joseon, and Japanese colonial period. Authors from domestic affiliations made up 73.34% of the total, but the proportion of authors belonging to foreign institutions continued to increase. As for author keywords, ‘Korea’(41), ‘Buddhism’(20), ‘Koreanwar’(18), and ‘Joseon’(18) were derived as top keywords. In topic modeling, six topics were identified; ‘Korean culture, cultural transmission,’ ‘Korean modern political history,’ ‘Korean social democratization process,’ ‘Japanese colonial period,’ ‘Korean religious philosophy,’ and ‘Korean ancient history.’ Through this study, it was possible to identify the interests in and research areas of the recent international academic community of Korean studies.