Early Years
Born in Brookline, Massachusetts, Palais graduated from Harvard University in 1955 with a bachelor's degree in American history. He learned Korean in the army at the Monterey Language Institute; and this sparked an interest in East Asia.
Following his discharge from the army, he earned an MA in Japanese History from Yale in 1960.
Palais studied at the Kyujanggak from 1963 to 1965. His Ph.D. was conferred at Harvard in 1968 with a dissertation on the reform policies of Heungseon Daewongun in the late 1800s. His dissertation was published under the title Politics and Policies in Traditional Korea by Harvard University Press in 1975. At Harvard he had worked with Edward W. Wagner, one of the founders of Korean studies in North America.
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