Purpose: The purpose of this paper were to analyze the research trend of alternative education and school in Korea so that we can make recommendations for future research. Method: To achieve this purpose, we selected 247 articles from 1997 to 2105 focusing on alternative education and analyzed them by the publishing year, objectives, targets, methodology, subject. Results: The key outcomes are follows: First, on research publication, the number of articles significantly increased from 2003 to 2006. However, from 2006 to 2007, they abruptly decreased. The total number of articles in 2015 increased almost more than fourfold compared to the number in 1997. Second, most of the research was targeted at overall learners without the learner type and age limit. On the alternative school, most of research(52.2%) was performed without giving the type. Third, on the research objectives, practice oriented papers(52.2%) were a little bit more than the theory oriented(49.4%). On the research methods, the literature review(47.8%) and the qualitative analysis(23.5%) were the major ones. Fourth, on the research subjects, generally it was led by education concept(24.3%) rather than education contents(3.5%) and methods(0.4%). Conclusion: In the beginning, research trends related to alternative education was focused on theoretical study. But over time, most of the research has been paying more attention to new contents and practical implementation. Although this change is the essential part of alternative education, there should still be more researches on the purpose and the philosophical discussions of alternative education.