Abstract

This study aims to grasp the key issues and the direction for digital divide research in South Korea. Based on the 488 KCI journal articles published between 2003 and 2020, the authors analyzed the changes in the number of articles per year and the subject areas of journals. Furthermore, the topic modelling and keyword network anlaysis were applied to identify the subjects of research. The main findings can be summarized as follows: first, there was a stable trend for a while after the number of articles had increased by the year of 2007, and then there has been a sharp increase since 2019. Second, digital divide research has been conducted from diverse fields including social science, multidiscipline, and engineering. Third, the six subject areas were identified which are 'digital divide among regions', 'digital divide among people with disabilities', 'technical environment of digital divide', 'divide from information use and its consequence', 'legal and institutional environments of digital divide', and 'digital divide of the elderly'. Finally, it was shown that the areas of 'divide from information use and its consequence' and 'technical environment of digital divide' have attracted attention recently.