The academic and educational identity of the ‘Korean Language Education’ subject is a very important matter in the school of grades 1 through 12, because of its deep relatedness with all the aspects of schooling. For example, the educational objectives, content selection, the compilation of textbooks, the methods of teaching and assessment are all being deeply influenced by how we define the identity of the korean language education subject. It is the core course that so many scholars in the field of korean language education urged and tried so many times to establish the identity of the school subject, ‘Korean Language Education’. There have been two traditional understandings on the concept and identity of the korean language education subject in elementary and middle schools. In this thesis, these two understandings are called ‘content-plus-method complex view’ and ‘content-only view’ respectively. The first view takes the stance that the main content of the ‘Korean Language Education’ subject should be two kinds of knowledge, that is, knowledge about korean language(that is, korean grammar), and knowledge about korean literature(including the history of the korean literature). This view also insist that the teaching method should be based on the general theories of teaching developed and introduced by the educational researchers. In this article, this view is formulated abbreviately as ‘school subject = content + method. This first view is most widely supported by the scholars in the areas of linguistics, literature, and education in general. The second view, that is, ‘content-based view’ takes the stance that, in the school subject, teachers should teach the content knowledge. scholars and teachers in this view also insist that the teaching methods should be based on the theories and structures of the knowledge contents. that is, the grammar of Korean language structures, and the structures and history of Korean literature. The author of this article criticizes the above two views, and argues that the identity of the subject ‘Korean language’ in school grades 1 -12 is quite different from other school subjects like social studies, mathematics, and natural sciences. The main purposes of language subject are to increase and strengthen the students' language skills in speaking, listening, reading, and writing. The author suggests several grounds to base his assertion. To say some, most advanced countries established, already from a century ago, the goal of language subject on increasing students's language skills; The weekly teaching units of language subject is the most among the whole school subjects; Only the language subject contains in the textbook the passages concerning not only language and literature but also other areas such as social studies, sciences, arts, and others. It was already asserted in the 5th school curriculum change in 1987 that the concept and academic identity of Korean language subject should be changed from the two traditional views(that is, teaching knowledge) to a new one(that is, increasing and strengthening of students' language skills). This new idea was also adopted in the research and compilation of textbooks for teaching Korean language in the elementary and middle schools. As the results of this change in the curriculum, the textbooks of korean language education subject in elementary school were developed in three unitary books as speaking-listening textbook, reading textbook, and writing textbook. One educational scholar expressed in her paper published in the abroad that the innovation in the Korean language subject was one of two greatest influential educational innovations in Korea. Even though both the curriculum of the subject Korean language, and the textbooks of the language subject were completely changed, many scholars and teachers are still staying in the traditional concepts of the identity of korean language education subject. The author of this article proposes, to those scholars and teachers, to hold a great debate on the academic and educational identity of Korean language education subject. The author also advices the government to provide nation-wide teacher retrainings for the existing school teachers for explaining the newly adopted identity of Korean language subject.