Yang Hi Choe-Wall


Yang Hi Choe-Wall is a Korean Australian academic, writer and researcher specialising in Korean literature of Chosŏn period. She was Fellow / Associate Professor in the Division of Pacific and Asian History, the Australian National University. Choe-Wall is the winner of the 2013 Daesan Literary Awards, who is now retired and living in Canberra, Australia.

Early years

Yang Hi Choe-Wall was born in Seoul, Korea, the fourth child of a family of six children. Her father Ch'oe Chae-sŏ, was a distinguished professor of English literature, a leading Korean intellectual and a prolific literary critic, who published 18 books and over 300 articles in three languages.
Choe-Wall grew up in Seoul during the Japanese annexation of Korea and remained in that city during the Korean War. She attended primary and early part of secondary schools in Seoul, where all subjects were taught in the Japanese language until 1945. Despite the many privations and upsets that befell the family
during the two wars, it held together and some of Choe-Wall's siblings became senior
academics both in America and France.

Career

Choe-Wall's undergraduate studies led to a BA in English Language and Literature,
following which she took up an appointment with Hongik University, as a lecturer in
English language.
In September 1965, Choe-Wall moved to Australia with her young daughter and son, having
accepted an appointment with The Australian National University in Canberra as librarian of the
Japanese collection in the Menzies Library, the university's principal research library.
Choe-Wall received her Master of Arts degree in Asian Studies from the Australian National University in 1974. Her thesis Hanjung-nok: Memoirs of a Yi Dynasty Court Lady was later published as Memoirs of a Korean Queen. In 1980 she did her Graduate Diploma in Library and Information Science at Charles Sturt University, New South Wales. Choe-Wall was awarded her PhD in Asian Studies from the Australian National University in 1985. Her PhD thesis was Hŏ Nansŏrhŏn and Her Hanshi – A study of the life and work of Hŏ Nansŏrhŏn – a late sixteenth-century Korean poet. This was published as Vision of a Phoenix
with the book now in its 4th edition.
In 1984 she was appointed lecturer in Korean at the Australian National University. This was followed by an appointment as Fellow / Associate Professor of the Australian National University. in 1993. She retired from the Australian National University in 1996, but as a Visiting Fellow of the University continued to work on the Encyclopaedia of Korea as Project Director and Chief Compiler until 1999.
Dr Yang Hi Choe-Wall's main research interest is the Korean literature of Chosŏn. She has published extensively and presented many papers on this subject at international conferences of Korean Studies, including the XXXII International Congress for Asia andNorth African Studies, Hamburg, 1986; The First Pacific Basin International Conference on Korean Studies, University of Hawaii,1992; The 1993 International Korean Literature Conference, University of California at Berkeley; Translation of Korean Literary Works and their Diffusion in Europe, l' Universite Paris 7, Paris, 1994., etc.

Awards

OCLC/WorldCat Identities overview statistics for writings by and about Yang Hi Choe-Wall include approximately 20+ works in 54+ publications in three languages and 2,450 + library holdings. The books have been published primarily in English, but also in Korean and French.