The rapid advancement of globalization has resulted in an increase in the number of English language learners. In the education systems of China and South Korea, English has become a compulsory course in middle school. In the context of the new national conditions and the new curriculum reform, EFL teachers' needs for professional development in middle school are more important and urgent. On the basis of lifelong education, new curriculum requirements and Maslow's self-actualization theory, quantitative and qualitative methods such as document analysis, comparative analysis, questionnaires and interviews are used in this research. The subjects of this research are 93 Chinese EFL teachers of middle schools attending the national training program and 57 Korean EFL teachers of middle schools in North Jeolla Province. It aims to find the differences in the professional development needs of middle school EFL teachers in the two countries and get some insights from Korean teachers' professional development in order to promote Chinese EFL teachers' professional development in middle schools. The SPSS 26.0 is employed to analyze the data. The reliability of the questionnaire is 0.849. In this research, the researcher compares the pre-service education in China and Korea. Based on the chi-square test, the significance value is .018. The research results show that pre-service training for middle school teachers to get higher academic degrees in China is less than in the counterpart of South Korea. The Chinese EFL teachers of middle schools need to improve their academic qualifications in order to teach and educate students more effectively. The difference between the uses of modern educational methods during in-service training between the two countries is measured to be 0.007 by the chi-square test. The t-test is used for past training experiences and achievements in in-service training (α=0.000). In conclusion, to meet in-service education needs, South Korea has a high proportion of teachers with ICT training. Korean EFL teachers have more chances to attend in-service training and the achievements of Korean EFL teachers in this training are higher than those in China. The following is suggested for Chinese teachers: For pre-service education training, the training professional standards and training courses should be reasonable. For in-service education training, the Chinese government should provide more opportunities for teachers and pay more attention to their ICT teaching abilities.