Adult learning research in South Korea before and after the COVID-19 pandemic: A topic modelling analysis

Authors: Kyubeen Lee and Seokyoung Oh (corresponding author)
Yonsei University, Republic of Korea

Edition: Volume 66, Number 2, July 2026

Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted adult learning systems worldwide, yet how this disruption reshaped the discursive structure of adult learning research in non-Western contexts remains underexamined. This study traces structural changes in South Korean adult learning research before and after the pandemic, drawing on 1,676 peerreviewed articles indexed in the Korea Citation Index (KCI) between 2015 and 2024. English-language author keywords were analysed through keyword frequency analysis, co-occurrence network analysis, and Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic modelling. The results reveal a dual pattern of continuity and reconfiguration: the disciplinary anchors — adult learner and lifelong learning — strengthened across both periods, while the surrounding thematic structure was substantially redistributed. Three structural changes stand out: the institutional core persisted but loosened; two themes that had been peripheral — methodological reflexivity and developmental-disability research — consolidated into distinct topics; and the previously coherent competency–HRD cluster lost its internal cohesion. These findings extend prior Anglophone-only trend analyses by showing how a national regulatory context conditions the way a global disruption registers in scholarly discourse.

Keywords: adult learning and education, COVID-19 pandemic, text mining, topic modelling, keyword network analysis

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