Korean Educational Development Institute(KEDI)

Second-Cycle Longitudinal Study on North Korean Migrant Youths’ Education (Ⅲ)

Since 2000’s the number of North Korean migrant youth in elementary, middle and high school has continuously increased and reached 2,538 in 2018. The longitudinal study which started to explore the settlement process and supporting tasks of North Korean migrant youths reached its ninth year. Based on a basic research in 2010, the first-cycle longitudinal study was conducted from 2011 to 2015, and based on a basic research in 2016, the collecting data of the second-cycle study was started in 2017. In the first-cycle study, both quantitative and qualitative data were simultaneously collected and utilized. However, considering the practicality of the research progress, the second-cycle study has been conducted focusing on qualitative data.

This research is aims to: understand the characteristics of lives of North Korean migrant youths focusing on crucial dimensions of their lives; and find issues that appear within the differences in inner categories of North Korean migrant youth. Furthermore, on the basis of quantitative data accumulated from the first-cycle study, we identified tendency in longitudinal change of "educational development" and "social integration", and their mutual relations which are considered important in the research model of the second-cycle study. Also, we expected to identify the general tendency which cannot be identified through the qualitative data. Another purpose of this study was to increase data utilization through disclosing data of the first-cycle study.