Harold Hongju Koh - Early Life and Family

Early Life and Family

Koh was born in Boston, Massachusetts. His parents grew up in Korea under Japanese rule. He has described his family thus:

They grew up under Japanese colonial rule, forbidden to speak Korean or even to use their Korean names. When their country was divided after World War II, my mother and her family were trapped in North Korea. In desperation, they hiked for days to the border to be picked up and were brought back to Seoul. But even there, they lived under dictatorship. For less than a year in the 1960s, (South) Korea enjoyed democracy. My father joined the diplomatic corps. But one day, tanks rolled and a coup d'etat toppled the government, leaving us to grow up in America.

After the coup, Koh's father, legal scholar and diplomat Kwang Lim Koh, was granted asylum in the United States. He moved to New Haven, Connecticut with his family and took a teaching position at Yale. His wife, Hesung Chun Koh (Harold Koh's mother), had a Ph.D. in sociology and taught at Yale as well—they were the first Asian Americans to teach there.

One of six siblings, Harold was struck by polio at age six; he went through "two operations, leg braces, and endless rehabilitation" and as a result still walks with a limp.

One of Koh's siblings, Howard Kyongju Koh, a Harvard University public health professor and former Massachusetts Public Health Commissioner, currently serves as the United States Assistant Secretary for Health in the Obama administration. Another sibling, Jean Koh Peters, also teaches at Yale Law School.

Koh's wife, Mary-Christy Fisher, is an attorney employed by the New Haven Legal Assistance Association; they have two children.