Corn (Zea mays) is one of the most widely grown crops throughout the world. However, many corn fields develop pest problems such as corn borers every year that seriously affect its yield and quality. Corn's response to initial insect damage involves a variety of changes to the levels of defensive enzymes, toxins, and communicative volatiles. Such a dramatic change secondary metabolism necessitates the regulation of gene expression at the transcript level. This Data In Brief paper summarizes the datasets of the transcriptome of corn plants in response to corn stalk borers (Ostrinia furnacalis) and/or methyl jasmonate (MeJA). Altogether, 39, 636 genes were found to be differentially expressed. The sequencing data are available in the NCBI SRA database under accession number SRS965087. This dataset will provide more scientific and valuable information for future work such as the study of the functions of important genes or proteins and develop new insect-resistant maize varieties. Includes supplementary tables and data in fasta and GTF format.