Ross King

Ross King is a Professor in Korean Language and Literature at the Department of Asian Studies, Faculty of Arts, University of British Columbia. With a Ph.D. in Linguistics from Harvard University (1991) and BA/MA in Linguistics from Yale/Harvard, his work bridges historical linguistics, dialectology, and language policy in the Sinographic cultural sphere.

• Education:
  • Ph.D., Linguistics, Harvard University, 1991
  • M.A., Linguistics, Harvard, 1986
  • B.A., Linguistics (Japanese-Korean) and Political Science, Yale, 1983

Research Interests include:

• History of language/writing in Sinographic Cosmopolis
• Korean historical grammar and pre-hangul sources
• Diasporic Korean dialects (Russia/Central Asia)
• Korean language nationalism and pedagogy
• Comparative translation practices in East Asia

Recent Publications examine Soviet Korean dialect evolution, James Scarth Gale's conservative language projects, Sheldon Pollock's cosmopolitan vernacular theory applied to East Asia, and Korean language education infrastructure. His work appears in Acta Koreana, Korean Linguistics, and Brill's East Asian Studies series.

Language Education Initiatives include co-founding the Korean Language Village and authoring university textbooks like Elementary Korean and Advanced Korean (with Jaehoon Yeon). He critiques South Korea's soft power strategies while documenting premodern Korean literary traditions through manuscripts and glossaries.