he current status and challenges of Hangeul schools in the U.S.

This article aims to explore the current status and challenges of Hangeul schools in the United States. The researcher has first-hand experience as a HLS teacher for more than five years during his long residence in the United States and interviewed current HLS teachers and principals to learn more about the current status and changes in HLS. The study found that HLSs have recently diversified their student body with an influx of non-Korean adult learners and children from multicultural Korean families, which has led to greater differences in levels among learners. Teachers have become increasingly concerned about how to teach to these differences, and are grappling with how to move toward an education system that reflects students' diverse language levels, cultural backgrounds, and purposes for coming to Hangeul. As the times have changed, Hangeul schools have been faced with the challenge of establishing a new status as an institution that is responsible for educating foreign learners in Korean language and culture, in addition to its original identity as a national language and heritage language. In this regard, the Korean government should actively intervene and strive to build a more systematic system of Hangeul schools, and it is time for more active coordination and communication at the government level to resolve conflicts between Korean language schools that arise due to the overlap of learners.