A Qualitative Meta-Analysis of North Korean Defector Adolescents’ Adaptation to School

The purpose of this study is to comprehensively analyze the results of individual qualitative studies on North Korean defector adolescents’ adaptation to school. Therefore, a qualitative meta-analysis, a research method that comprehensively analyzes the results of individual qualitative studies, was conducted by selecting domestic academic journal papers on school adaptation for North Korean defector adolescents published until December 2025 as the scope of the study. A total of 15 related papers were selected for analysis, and as a result of analyzing them, 20 subcategories and 5 categories were derived from the concepts, which are semantic units extracted from the school adaptation tasks and patterns of North Korean defector adolescents, such as ‘academic’, 'career', 'relationship with teachers', 'friendship and peer culture', and 'identity'. This study provided more specific suggestions for school education and policies of North Korean defector adolescents in the future by providing not only contextual understanding but also multi-layered and complex insights through comparison and contrast through comprehensive analysis of these individual studies.