Ross King (academic)

King is a researcher in Korean historical linguistics, Korean dialectology (especially Koryo-mar, the dialect of Koryo-saram),^[8] and literary culture in the Sinographic Sphere.^[9] In 2022, he spent a year as a visiting scholar at Sungkyunkwan University in South Korea.^[10]

King is also a vocal advocate for greater South Korean private and public investment in international language learning of Korean, in order to capitalize on and sustain the success of the Korean Wave.^[11][12] In 1999, he established Sup sogŭi Hosu, or the Korean Language Village, in Minnesota, United States, to encourage Korean language immersion.^[13][14] In 2015, he and John Duncan jointly established the Inter-University Center for Korean Language Studies (IUC; 국제한국학센터) at Sungkyunkwan University in Seoul, South Korea. The program is partnered a number of universities, such as Harvard and the University of California, Los Angeles, and provides training and resources for Korea-related academic research.^[15][16][17] In 2018, he took over as editor-in-chief of the Sungkyun Journal of East Asian Studies from Boudewijn Walraven.^[18]

King has received a number of awards for his contributions to the linguistics of Korean and Korean language education. In 2000, he received a commendation from the Prime Minister of South Korea.^[19][20] In 2022, he was given the Oesol Award (외솔상), which was named for the Korean linguist Choe Hyeon-bae (whose art name was Oesol).^[10] In 2025, he and his former PhD student Dafna Zur^[21] jointly received the Manhae Prize.^[22]

King has studied and academically written about a number of different languages. Besides English, he has studied French, German, Russian, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, and Korean.^[10][23] He is married to a South Korean woman, whom he met at Harvard.^[13][20]