Factoids on KOTESOL Conferences

24 Factoids on KOTESOL Conferences

1.  The first KOTESOL conference was held on October 16-17, 1993, at Wonkwang University in Iri (now Iksan), Jeonbuk, celebrating KOTESOL’s first year as an organization.
2.  KOTESOL 2027 will be KOTESOL’s 34th international conference – one held every year since its founding, except for 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
3.  The absence of an autumn conference in 2020 due to the pandemic, created an opportune time for KOTESOL to move its international conference from autumn to spring, an option that it had been considering for years.
4.  All of KOTESOL’s international conferences have been held in Seoul except three: Iksan, 1993; Gyeongju, 1997; Daegu, 2000.
5.  While the international conference is regularly hosted in Seoul, it is often complemented by a national conference hosted outside of the Seoul area in the opposite half of the year.
6.  To date, 19 national conferences have been held in diverse locations from Incheon (2025) to Gwangju (2024) and from Busan (2012) to Wonju (2016).
7.  Two national conferences (2020 & 2021) and two international conferences (2021 & 2022) were held totally online.
8.  The KOTESOL International Conference is regularly the largest annual ELT conference held in Korea.
9.  Approximately 200 English teachers attended KOTESOL’s first conference in 1993. Attendance grew to over 1,000 each year between 2007and 2014, with over 1,550 attendees in 2010.
10. COVID-19 and online viewing habits have decreased post-pandemic in-person conference attendance, but for KOTESOL, it has been gradually increasing, reaching approximately 600 attendees in 2026.
11. The International Conference attracts the world’s most renowned figures in the fields of English Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics. To name a few: Jack Richards, Thomas Farrell, David Nunan, Stephen Krashen, Rod Ellis, Scott Thornbury, Jill Hadfield, Curtis Kelly, Rebecca Oxford, Willy Renandya, Jeremy Harmer, Michael Long, Michael McCarthy, Penny Ur, Paul Nation, Alan Maley, Andrew Cohen, Jane Willis, Kathleen Bailey, Donald Freeman, Dick Allwright.
12. The International Conference has grown from 30 presentations in 1993 to well over 200 academic presentations in recent years.
13. In addition to research presentations, our international conferences offer workshops, panel discussions, roundtables, poster presentations, and sometimes pecha kucha sessions.
14. Aside from its presentations, the international conference offers booths for commercial entities, NPOs, KOTESOL chapters and SIGs, and beginning in 2026, a “Marketplace,” where artists, artisans, creators, and educators offer handcrafted goods.
15. As a founding member of the Pan Asian Consortium, KOTESOL has held the PAC Conference three times in association with the KOTESOL International Conference (PAC 2 in 1999, PAC 2010, and PAC 2017).
16. The competition to give a presentation at the International Conference is quite high. For example, in 2013 only about 40% of the conference presentation proposals submitted could be accepted.
17. International Conference planning is so critical that it begins more than a year in advance of the conference date: Invited speakers for the May 2026 International Conference were already being confirmed in the spring of 2025.
18. KOTESOL International Conference presenters and attendees come from around the world: East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia and Australia, North America, Europe, and the Middle East.
19. KOTESOL’s International Conference is truly “international.” Of the total presenters, well over half are educators based abroad.
20. The planning committee for the international conference is by far KOTESOLS largest committee, with approximately 50 committee members and with a contingent of over 50 onsite associates.
21. International Conference Committee members are all KOTESOL-member volunteers contributing many hours of their time throughout the year in making preparations for the two-day conference.
22. The annual international conference is KOTESOL’s unrivaled mega-event of the year, requiring the largest KOTESOL committee, the largest budget, and the largest number of staff-hours for the planning, preparation, and execution of the event.
23. A number of the members of the current International Conference Committee have been an important committee member of each international conference for more than a decade – and more than two decades for a few.
24. In addition to KOTESOL’s national and international conferences, the association’s eight regional chapters also host chapter conferences at various times and in various locations throughout the year.

Prepared October 2026

By David Shaffer