The Applied Linguistics Association of Korea (ALAK) was founded in 1978 and began exchanges with the International Association of Applied Linguistics (AILA) that same year.

In September 1997, at the AILA Business Meeting (Executive Board & International Committee) held in Tokyo, Japan, it became the 32nd official AILA member country and joined the International Committee.

As the Korean affiliate of AILA, we actively fulfill our role by organizing scholarly events and participate in international conferences every year to promote academic exchange and strengthen scholarly collaboration among scholars.

The academic journal 「The Korean Journal of Applied Linguistic」 was first published in 1982 and was designated as a Korean Citation Index (KCI) by the National Research Foundation of Korea in December 2004.

Until 2002, we had been holing our annual academic conferences twice a year, in summer and winter, attracting many domestic and international scholars. Starting in 2003, the conferences were adjusted to be held once a year to ensure more substantive content.