The purpose of this study is to analyze the research trends in gifted education in Korea over the four years from 2018 to 2021, when the 4th Master Plan for the Promotion of Gifted and Talented Education was implemented. To do this, the study data consisted of 190 research papers published in the KCI-listed academic journals "Journal of Gifted/Talented Education" and "The Journal of the Korean Society for Gifted and Talented." Topic modeling (LDA) and semantic network analysis (SNA) methods were used in this study. The results are as follows. First, the articles on gifted education were divided into seven topic areas: creative thinking, student selection and evaluation, career development, science high schools and gifted schools, gifted education programs, underprivileged gifted children, and gifted children. Among these, the topic that accounted for the largest proportion of topics studied was gifted education programs. Second, as a result of analyzing the trends in the topics over a period of four years, career development was a prevalent research topic, but the others were found to be neutral. Third, the topics of papers on gifted education research were linked to the keywords : teacher, perception, core competency, program, student, giftedness, and influence. In addition, recognition was an important keyword connected to most topics. Based on these results, we derive implications according to the policy direction emphasized in the 4th Master Plan for the Promotion of Gifted and Talented Education and provide basic data for policy establishment.