Young-Key Kim-Renaud (김영기)

Dr. Young-Key Kim-Renaud is a theoretical linguist with a broad interest in the Korean humanities and Asian affairs. She is Professor Emeritus of Korean Language and Culture and International Affairs, previous chair (2002-2014) of the East Asian Languages and Literatures Department, and a former faculty member of the Linguistics Program at the George Washington University. She is the founder of GW’s annual Hahn Moo-Sook Colloquium in the Korean Humanities series.

Before joining GW, she served as Assistant Program Director for Linguistics at the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF). She has taught as a visiting faculty at Harvard University and Nanjing University. She is past President of the International Circle of Korean Linguistics (ICKL, 1990-1992) and previous Editor-in-Chief of its journal, Korean Linguistics (2002-2014). Kim-Renaud received a B.A. in English from Ewha Womans University; an M.A. in Linguistics from the University of California, Berkeley; a graduate degree in French from the Sorbonne, University of Paris; and a Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Hawai‘i.

Dr. Kim-Renaud has published widely on Korean language and linguistics, Korean literature,  Korean women, Korean cultural history, and current affairs. Among her thirteen books are Korean: An Essential Grammar (Routledge, 2009), Creative Women of Korea: The Fifteenth through the Twentieth Centuries (M.E. Sharpe, 2003), and The Korean Alphabet: Its History and Structure (U of Hawai‘i Press, 1997), Theoretical Issues in Korean Linguistics (Stanford: CSLI, 1994).

Dr. Kim-Renaud has received various awards and grants, including three Fulbright awards; the Republic of Korea Order of Cultural Merit, Jade Class; and the Samsung Foundation’s Bichumi Grand Award. She has organized major academic conferences, literary events, and cultural programs. She has helped raise seven endowment funds in Korean studies at GW, the most recent one being an endowment fund to create a faculty position in Korean literature and culture, carrying her name jointly with the Korea Foundation. Dr. Kim-Renaud has testified in U.S. courts and has been interviewed by international as well as by Korean media as a linguist, a cultural expert, and a Korea scholar.

Dr. Kim-Renaud has been President of the Korea-US Washington Forum (formerly Washington Korean-American Forum) since 2017. kimrenau@gwu.edu, https://eall.columbian.gwu.edu/young-key-kim-renaud.