This study primarily aims to provide the preliminary information for the future tourism event motivation research by exploring the trends of event motivation research shown on 13 academic journals including 12 KCI(Korea Citation Index) journals of National Research Foundation of Korea and Event and Convention Research, a specialty journal of event research. A total of 129 research papers were reviewed and analyzed by using content analysis. Findings showed that the first paper of tourism event motivation research appeared in 1999 with continuous increase of the related research in various tourism academic journals in Korea. The academic journal of Tourism and Leisure Research has published the most related articles. In terms of research methodology, notably quantitative research has been predominant, which indicates further requirement of extending qualitative research for event motivation in the future. On the other hand, the most frequently researched types of event were "festival" and "MICE(meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions)". Consequently, future research may therefore consider systematizing the structure of event participative motivation in accordance with the type of event.