In order to search for the direction of concerns with preschool education in Korea, the article raises the following three basic questions: How has been the social, intellectual, and emotional effects of preschool education on the development of the children? If the preschool education proved to make a difference to the development of children, who should receive the formal preschool education? What should be the goal of preschool education? The question on the effect of the preschool education on the social emotional and intellectual development of children were studied in the article by analyzing the literatures mostly including the experimental studies in the fields. Although the results of the studies are inconclusive mainly due to the methodological defects and the lack of the accuracy in experimental control, they give a support to the thesis that the formal preschool education does help the development of children and make a difference to the future academic achievement. Admitting the value of preschool education in the social, emotional, and intellectual development, there arise two questions: "education for whom" and "education for what." In order to define the first question, the characteristics of Korean preschool population were analyzed: 1) as of 1975, there are 611 kindergarten, with only a public one. 2) presently there are 32032 children in Korean kindergarten, which amounts to 2.3 percent of the total population of the same age group. The data imply that only the children from the higher strata of the society received the formal education and the preschool education is out of public concerns. Since the fact is theoretically against the principle of equal opportunity, it is necessary to pay attention to the following possibilities: establishment of public kindergarten and compulsory attendance in kindergarten, extension of adult education for preschool education, and cultivation of the programs for pre-school children in televison and radio. Concerning the issue of "education for what" the problems of the educational goal of the kindergarten were analyzed. While there are legal, institutional goals, there seem to be a absence of the working goals from the following view points: 1) the existing goals can be regarded as objectives rather than goals in the sense that there is a lack of valuational directions in the statement of goal. 2) there is a lack of scientific connection between the goals and working educational activities. In view of the two problems in the existing goals, it is recommended for the future studies to search for the direction of goal in terms of values, and to establish the reasonable connection between the goals and educational activities in the kindergarten.