• Korean Journal of Childcare and Education
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• v.9 no.5
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• pp.201-228
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• 2013

The research goal of this study is to investigate the realities and difficulties of English education for young children of North Korean refugee mothers. The subjects of this study were 201 North Korean refugee mothers of 3-5-year-old children. They were surveyed and some of them were interviewed on their children's English education. The results of the study are as follows. First, most of the North Korean refugee mothers in this study provided their children with English education since their children were 3 years old. The major reason for the English education was their children's peer group who received English education early in their lives. Their educational interaction periods with their children were less than 10 minutes, and they had their young children study English alone, focusing solely on their assignment. Next, North Korean refugee mothers claimed that the biggest difficulties for teaching English to their children were cost, lack of information, lack of time to teach English, and unsatisfactory English education. They expressed that the cost for English education was a burden on the family to some extent.