This study examines the effects of group art-therapy on North Korean
refugee children's self-esteem and peer relational skills by applying Gestalt
theory. The study was conducted once a week for 90 minutes each time for
16 sessions in total at a North Korean Refugee Children Care Center in K
city. The subjects were three North Korean refugee children in the lower
grades and three South Korean school children from the care center were
recruited to form a control group. The methodology used in this study was
'self-esteem measure'. It was developed by Bo-ga Choi and Gui-yeon
Jeon(1993) and revised by Sang-gil Choi(2005) based on research by
Coopersmith(1967) and McChale and Chaighead(1988). Peer relational skills
scale for children and adolescents(PRS-AC) was used for measuring peer
relational skills, which was developed by Yoon-ran Yang(2004) based on
previous studies(Caldarella & Merrell, 1997; Gresham & Elliott, 1990). Some
vocabularies in PRS-AC were revised for North Korean refugee children
through Cronbach's reliability test. Furthermore, pre- and post-therapy HTP
painting test were carried out in order to detect unconscious changes which
are not easily measured in traditional art theories or methods For qualitative
analysis of their behavioral change, additional group was selected by another
group of survey assistants equivalent to this study design criteria, and
investigated by the typical research methods conducted in this study. The
results of this study showed that Gestalt group art-therapy helps improve
the subjects' self-esteem and peer relational skills.