The purpose of this study is to analyze the characteristics of action research in the field of English education in Korea from 2001 to 2015 across 36 masters/doctoral theses and 21 articles from journals. The researcher specifically focuses on the following criteria: purpose, theme, methodology, differences between such characteristics across action research published in journals to that published in dissertations. According to the results, the number of action research dissertations has increased in recent years and the study suggests the number of action research continue its upward trend; action research in Korea has been more prevalent at the primary school level rather than at the secondary and university levels; and the proportion of mixed method in English education was much higher than that of the mixed research in education with a 43% mixed method proportion accompanied by 55% of qualitative research. The study concludes that action research in English education in Korea will become a more meaningful and feasible tool for practitioners’ inquiries, as it provides graduate students with applied experience in their current demanding school environment and writing assignments such as their thesis and research papers. The author suggests that the aforementioned factors enlarge the existential meaning of current graduate schools in Korea.