Korean School Counselors Fall Into Five Distinct Profiles in Supporting LGBTQ+ Students

A new study of South Korean school counselors has identified five distinct profiles in how professionals combine competence in counseling LGBTQ+ students with concrete advocacy on their behalf, and the results point to a striking conclusion: general counseling experience counts for little, while targeted LGBTQ+ education and direct experience with LGBTQ+ clients are what separate the most engaged counselors from the least. The research, published open access in Current Psychology, used a person-centered statistical technique known as latent profile analysis on survey responses from 259 school counselors working within South Korea’s national school counseling system.

The context matters. South Korean LGBTQ+ youth face documented discrimination, verbal abuse, cyberbullying, physical violence, and sexual assault rooted in prejudice against their sexual orientation and gender identity. Many students respond by concealing their identities, with documented consequences for psychological well-being and career aspirations. Rates of suicidal ideation, suicide attempts, and self-harm are disproportionately higher among Korean LGBTQ+ youth than among their peers. A distinctive structural feature compounds these risks: South Korea is one of only two OECD countries without a comprehensive national antidiscrimination law, which limits legal recourse for students who experience discrimination.

South Korea’s Ministry of Education launched the Wee Project in 2008, establishing a three-tiered support system: Wee Class units based in individual schools, Wee Centers serving districts, and Wee Schools as specialized alternative institutions. The system expanded access to school-based counseling, but access does not necessarily translate into safety for sexual and gender minority students. Many report perceiving school counselors as having limited competence in LGBTQ+ issues and express concerns about disclosure within the Wee Class setting. Counselors themselves report limited training on LGBTQ+ topics and lower perceived competence in this area relative to their general counseling skills.

There is also a structural trap built into the wider system. For adolescents in Korea, access to external mental health services requires parental consent, and some reports indicate that counselors have disclosed students’ sexual orientation or gender identity to guardians without consent. Fear of such involuntary disclosure may lead young people to avoid seeking help altogether. LGBTQ+ youth in Korea therefore face a dual barrier: limited safety and competence within schools, and restricted access to external support. These conditions motivated the study’s focus on strengthening both counseling competencies and advocacy activities among the professionals students encounter first.

The researchers, Gihun Im and Dongil Kim, framed their work around the multicultural and social justice counseling competencies framework, which treats attitudes and beliefs, knowledge, skills, and actions as a continuum running from individual self-awareness to social justice advocacy. LGBTQ+ counseling competencies were measured with the Korean Counselor LGBT Counseling Competency Scale, a 39-item instrument covering attitude awareness, counseling skills, and knowledge, showing high internal consistency in this sample. Advocacy activities were measured with a revised version of the Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Advocacy Activity Scale, covering individual-, school-, and community-level efforts. Because no validated Korean measure existed, the team followed a forward-backward translation procedure and adapted items for cultural relevance, replacing U.S.-specific organizational references with Korean equivalents such as PFLAG-Korea and the LGBTQ+ Youth Crisis Support Center Ddingdong.

Participants were recruited from late October to mid-November 2023 through verified online social media groups for school counselors and a listserv on the national educator intranet, with approval from the Institutional Review Board at Seoul National University. Of 313 initial respondents, 54 were excluded for inattentive or inconsistent responses, leaving 259 valid cases. The sample included counselors from elementary schools (32.8 percent), middle schools (35.5 percent), high schools (19.3 percent), and district counseling centers (12.4 percent). Most identified as female (86.9 percent) and heterosexual (90.3 percent), and 81.5 percent worked in the Greater Seoul area. Participants averaged about 66 months of counseling experience but had worked with an average of only 2.33 LGBTQ+ clients.

The latent profile analysis compared models with one to six profiles using information criteria, entropy values, and likelihood ratio tests alongside group size and interpretability. The five-profile solution emerged as optimal. The largest group, labeled Distant, comprised 42.47 percent of counselors and showed the lowest levels across all competency and advocacy subfactors. At the opposite end, the Advocacy-oriented group, 11.58 percent, showed the highest levels across every domain. Between these poles sat three intermediate profiles: the Passive group, 11.20 percent, with average competencies but low advocacy, particularly at school and community levels; the Average group, 20.46 percent, moderate across the board; and the Active group, 14.29 percent, generally high but with comparatively lower attitude awareness.

Multinomial logistic regression with a procedure that accounts for classification error revealed which factors moved counselors between profiles. LGBTQ+ education exposure was the strongest predictor, distinguishing profiles at every level, with the largest coefficient separating the Distant and Advocacy-oriented groups. Direct counseling experience with LGBTQ+ clients also consistently differentiated lower-engagement from higher-engagement profiles. Notably, overall counseling experience in general was not a significant predictor of profile membership, suggesting that accumulated years of practice alone do not build the specific competencies and advocacy habits that LGBTQ+ students need. Counselors’ own sexual orientation and gender identity distinguished the Distant group from the Active and Advocacy-oriented groups, consistent with prior evidence that LGBTQ+ counselors report higher competence. School level mattered for the top profile: counselors in middle schools, high schools, and district centers were more likely than elementary school counselors to belong to the Advocacy-oriented group, possibly reflecting fewer opportunities to encounter LGBTQ+ issues in elementary settings. Region of employment showed no association, which surprised the authors given prior findings that urban counselors show stronger engagement and the concentration of LGBTQ+ resources in Korean metropolitan areas.

The profile structure carries practical weight because it maps directly onto differentiated training needs. For the Distant group, the authors suggest foundational knowledge and skills training to reduce the risk of harm, structured self-reflection on attitudes, and information about referral systems and community resources. For the Passive group, whose affirming attitudes do not translate into action, training should target known barriers to advocacy, including lack of administrative support and fear of negative consequences, alongside concrete action planning and mentoring. The Average group presents a particular concern: although balanced, their mean advocacy score of 2.35 on a 6-point scale was substantially lower than the 4.28 reported by U.S. school counselors on the same instrument, suggesting their engagement may be insufficient to support LGBTQ+ students effectively. For the Active group, the relative gap in attitude awareness raises the documented risk of microaggressions when advocacy is not accompanied by critical self-awareness, pointing toward reflective practice and supervision. The Advocacy-oriented group may benefit from advanced case conceptualization skills and collaboration with school leadership to extend individual efforts into institutional change.

The authors are careful about the study’s limits. All measures were self-reports, capturing perceived rather than necessarily actual competence, and future work should incorporate observational or supervisor ratings and longitudinal designs. The online survey design introduced self-selection bias, and the sample skewed toward younger counselors and the Greater Seoul area, which may partly explain the absence of regional effects. The reliance on a translated U.S. instrument, designed around LGB advocacy, remains a limitation in the Korean context. Even so, the study demonstrates a method with reach beyond Korea: by identifying locally meaningful counselor profiles and linking them to targeted training, the person-centered approach offers a template for countries where, unlike the United States, no professional framework explicitly embeds advocacy in school counseling ethics. As the authors note, the findings support treating competencies and advocacy as interconnected processes rather than separate skill sets, and they suggest that structured LGBTQ+ education, currently underexposed in this sample, offers the clearest lever for moving more counselors toward engagement.

Subject of Research: Profiles of LGBTQ+ counseling competencies and advocacy among South Korean school counselors

Article Title: Korean school counselors’ counseling competencies and advocacy activities for LGBTQ+ youth: a latent profile analysis

Article References: Im, G., & Kim, D. (2026). Korean school counselors’ counseling competencies and advocacy activities for LGBTQ+ youth: a latent profile analysis. Current Psychology, 45(21), 1660. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-026-10221-6

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s12144-026-10221-6

Keywords: school counselors, LGBTQ+ youth, South Korea, latent profile analysis, counseling competencies, advocacy, multicultural counseling, social justice, Wee Project, counselor training, sexual and gender minorities, Current Psychology