Speech sound production accuracy produced by North Korean defectors’ adolescent children born in China

Purpose:Children from North Korean defector families possess different characteristics from children with other multicultural and multilingual backgrounds in Korea, partially due to the fact that the number of children born in third countries is higher than those of children born in North Korea. The purpose of the study is to analyze the word-level speech sound productions of adolescent children of North Korean refugee mothers, primarily through a calculation of speech sound accuracy.Methods: The participants consisted of 11 adolescent children whose mothers were North Korean defectors, and whose fathers were Chinese. Participants’ speech sound production skills were assessed using 103 words from the KS-PAPT and U-TAP.Results: Korean defectors’ adolescent children have lower consonant accuracy (PCC= 79.14%) compared to vowel accuracy (PVC=94.71%). The consonant accuracy of liquid/ㄹ/ was significantly lower than those of other manners of articulation. The consonant accuracy of word-final codas was significantly lower than those of other positions in word.Conclusions: This current research has clinical implications for the assessment and analysis of the speech production abilities of the adolescent children of North Korean refugees.