The present study investigated the characteristics and trends of academic research by Korean scholars of English education. The main focus was on the extent to which active scholars focus on their primary major areas. The study surveyed 11 journals of major academic societies in Korea, and analyzed a total of 5,072 research papers written by 1,639 scholars. The results showed that the most popular topic was acquisition/learning (19.30%), followed by English (applied) linguistics (17.90%), English materials (14.59%), teaching methodology (12.03%), and learning psychology (10.11%), the top five collectively comprising 73.93% of the total papers. The 99 most productive scholars published 1.01 papers per year on average. Younger scholars published more papers per year on average than older scholars. As for the concentrated efforts in their primary areas of research, the top 99 scholars wrote 46.84% of their papers on their primary areas, and 20.03% on their secondary areas of study. Younger scholars concentrated more efforts on their primary areas than older scholars. The results were interpreted, and suggestions were made for the future research.