Thematic Structure of Research on Hyanggyo and Seowon and Evolving Trends in Their Contemporary Utilization: A Big Data-Based Text Mining Analysis of Korean Academic Literature

This study quantitatively examines the thematic structure and chronological shifts in Korean academic research on Hyanggyo and Seowon, focusing on contemporary utilization.Using the Research Information Sharing Service (RISS), a corpus of Korean-language abstracts from 1,272 articles published in KCI-accredited and KCI-candidate journals from January 1990 to June 2026 was constructed through a five-stage post-retrieval filtering and data-cleaning process.The analytical procedures comprised annual publication trend analysis, term frequency (TF) and TF-IDF weighting analysis, and Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic modeling.Publication volume increased markedly in 2019, coinciding with the inscription of nine Korean Seowon on the UNESCO World Heritage List.The research discourse shifted from macro-level Neo-Confucian ideology and governing structures in Period 1 (1990)(1991)(1992)(1993)(1994)(1995)(1996)(1997)(1998)(1999)(2000)(2001)(2002)(2003), through the diversification of studies on historical figures, scholarly lineages, and local society in Period 2 (2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012)(2013)(2014)(2015)(2016)(2017)(2018).In Period 3 (2019-June 2026), core keywords related to practical utilization, including spatiality (sense of place), value, participation, and heritage transmission, emerged prominently as the discourse on contemporary utilization expanded.LDA identified five latent topics; Topic 2, integrating education, value, ritual, and practice, provided quantitative evidence for a distinct discourse on the contemporary reappraisal of Confucian cultural heritage and future-oriented practice.In contrast, cultural welfare and intergenerational integration did not emerge prominently as core themes.These findings offer scholarly and policy implications for the practical realization of the educational values of Hyanggyo and Seowon, digital archive-based storytelling, and participatory local heritage governance involving youth and local communities.