The Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Pathology was established in March 1970 by Dr. Young Pill Cho. Successive chairpersons of the department have included Dr. Han Kook Cho, Dr. Jaeo Cho, Dr. Eun Chull Kim, and Dr. Sang Wook Kang, who held the position until 2021. The tasks of the Department of Oral Pathology include conducting lectures and laboratory work for undergraduate dental students, as well as for graduate students pursuing MSD and PhD degrees. The department also engages in research within the field of oral pathology and provides diagnostic services for tissues obtained from diseases affecting the oral and maxillofacial regions. The objectives of the department are to equip students with the appropriate knowledge and skills to diagnose and develop accurate treatment plans for diseases affecting oral and maxillofacial structures through lectures and laboratory work after graduation. Since the establishment of the Master's and PhD programs in Oral and Maxillofacial Pathology, a total of 94 individuals have completed the Master's program, 45 individuals have completed the PhD program, and 1 individual has completed the Master-PhD collaboration program. Each participant completed their respective courses and obtained the appropriate degrees following the evaluation of their graduation theses.

The purpose of this study was to examine the state of the articles in the Korean Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Pathology and overall research trends in this field in an effort to grasp the reality of the Journal and suggest some of the right directions for the development of research in this field. 332 articles that were printed in the Korean Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Pathology over the past decade (2003-2012) were selected for the purpose of analysis. As a result of analysing the 332 articles in 52 issues of the Journal, it's found that a mean of 6.3 articles were contained in each issue. As for the form of article, original articles was more common than case reports, which were respectively used in 275 articles (82.8%) and 57 articles (17.2%). Concerning research methods by year, cell culture was most prevailing (124 articles, 37.3%), followed by clinicopathologic study (68, 20.5%), case report (62, 18.8%), animal experiments (28, 8.4%), clinical trial study (28, 8.4%) and others (22, 6.6%). As to the number of researchers, the majority of the articles were written by two or more researchers. The most common number of researchers was three (66 articles, 19.9%), and the number of the articles written by two (49, 14.8%) was similar to that of the articles written by four (47, 14.2%). 38 articles (11.4%) were written by eight researchers or more. Regarding the language of the articles, Korean was used in 213 articles (64.2%), and English was used in 119 articles (35.8%). As for the number of references, this number ranged from a low of zero(in the articles related to the history of pathology) to a high of 71, and the average number of references was 27.91. In relation to the themes of research, the largest number of the articles (47, 32.6%) dealt with oral squamous cell carcinoma, followed by diseases related to odontogenic carcinoma (21, 14.5%), diseases related to odontogenic cyst (17, 11.7%), salivary gland tumor (seven, 4.8%) and granuloma (five, 3.5%). The efforts by this study to explore the shifts of articles and recent research trends are expected to provide useful information on how to accelerate the identity building of this journal and the development of research in oral and maxillofacial pathology.