Gari Ledyard - Biography

Biography

Ledyard was born while his family happened to be in Syracuse for work during the Depression. He grew up in Detroit and Ann Arbor, Michigan, and moved with his family to San Rafael, California in 1948. After high school, he attended the University of Michigan and San Francisco State College, but did not do well, and in 1953 he joined the army to avoid the draft. Luckily, he missed so much basic training due to illness that he had to repeat it, and during that time opportunities opened up for language training, one of his interests.

He was scheduled for one year intensive Russian language training at the Army Language School in Monterey, but was soon reassigned to Korean. He graduated too high in his class to be sent to Korea, but after a few months was able to get a posting in Tokyo in July, 1955, and then a transfer to Seoul in November. While there he looked up the families of his Korean teachers, ate in town, and taught at the American Language Institute. When his superiors found out, he was accused of fraternization and reassigned to Tokyo, after only nine months in Korea, and returned to the US in December.

The next spring he enrolled in the University of California at Berkeley, in Chinese language and literature, studying under, among others, Peter Alexis Boodberg and Zhao Yuanren, as there was no Korean Studies program in the United States at the time. For his Bachelor degree in 1958 he translated the Hunmin Jeongeum Haerye into English; for his Master degree in 1963 he documented early Korean–Mongol diplomatic relations; and with a year for research in Seoul for his dissertation, he received his PhD in 1966 and a position at Columbia, at the Centre for Korean Research, succeeding William E. Skillend. He was made a full professor in 1977, and retired in 2001.

Ledyard's dissertation was The Korean Language Reform of 1446, on King Sejong's alphabet project, but concerned with the political implications and controversies of hangul as much as its creation. Unfortunately, he failed to copyright his dissertation, and it was distributed in microfilm and photocopy, so that he could not copyright it and publish without substantial revision. He was finally convinced to do so by the first director of the National Academy of the Korean Language, Lee Ki-Moon, and the book was published in Korea in 1998.

He has also published on Korean cartography, the alliance between Korea and China during the first Japanese invasions, and the relationship between the wars of the Three Kingdoms and the founding of the Japanese state from Korea. He also wrote a book about the journal written by the 17th century Dutch explorer Hendrick Hamel who was held hostage in Korea for 13 years. The title of this book is 'The Dutch come to Korea' and was first published in 1971. He was invited to visit North Korea in 1988.