Young-Key Kim-Renaud

Young-Key Kim-Renaud (Korean: 김영기; born c. 1942^[1][2]) is an American linguist and Koreanist of South Korean origin. She is professor emeritus of Korean Language and Culture and International Affairs at George Washington University.^[3]

Her mother was author Han Moo-sook.^[4][1][5] She graduated from Kyunggi Girls' High School [ko].^[6] She received a Bachelor of Arts in English from Ewha Womans University in 1963, a Master of Arts in linguistics from the University of California, Berkeley (Cal), a graduate degree in French as a Foreign Language from the University of Paris, Sorbonne, and a Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Hawaiʻi.^[1][3][2] According to Kim-Renaud, while at Cal, she taught the first course on the Korean language in American history.^[1] She served as Assistant Program Director for Linguistics at the U.S. National Science Foundation.^[5][3] She began teaching at George Washington University (GW) in 1983; she would teach there until her retirement in 2015. She was chair of the East Asian Languages and Literatures Department for the last 12 years of her tenure.^[1][3]

She was the first female President of the International Circle of Korean Linguistics;^[1][7] she served in that role from 1990 to 1992, and was editor-in-chief of its journal, Korean Linguistics, from 2002 to 2014.^[3] In 2006, she received the Order of Cultural Merit, 4th grade from the South Korean government.^[1][5] In 2024, she and her husband donated US$100,000 to Ewha Womans University to establish a Kim-Renaud Humanities Research Award (김·르노 인문과학 연구상).^[8]

Her husband is French economist Bertrand Renaud,^[1] with whom she has a daughter.^[5]