Young Kyun Oh (NHC Fellow, 2025–26)

Young Kyun Oh is an associate professor of Chinese and Sino-Korean at the School of International Letters and Cultures at Arizona State University. His research interests include the connected histories of East Asian languages and of Sinitic books. He was trained in East Asian philosophy, historical phonology of Chinese and Sino-Korean, and Literary Sinitic. He expanded his research to the history of East Asian books, exploring ways to place the premise and adaptation of Korean culture in the Sinophonic and Sinographic sphere. He is the author of Engraving Virtue: The Print History of the Premodern Korean Moral Primer (Brill, 2013), in which he delved into the cultural significance of woodblock printing in Sinitic societies, and articles on the book history, linguistic history, and literature of premodern Korea and East Asia.

Selected Publications

• Oh, Young Kyun. “Sheiren du shipu?—Leishu zhong de yinshi zhinan” 誰人讀食譜?—類書中的飲食指南 [Who Reads the Cookbook?—Dietary Guides in Encyclopedias]. Translated by Xiaoqiao Ling. In Xiaodao keguan: Zhongguo riyong meixue 小道可觀: 中國日用美學 [Minor Discourses: Aesthetics of the Everyday], edited by Xiaoqiao Ling, 267–87. Taipei: National Taiwan University Press, 2024.
• Oh, Young Kyun. “Yi Ok 李鈺 and His Iŏn 俚諺 (Folk Vernacular).” Sungkyun Journal of East Asian Studies 23, no. 2 (2023): 239–300.
• Oh, Young Kyun. “Books for the Illiterate: The Haengsil-to (Illustrated Manual for Moral Deeds) of Chosŏn Korea” In The Routledge Companion to Korean Literature, edited by Heekyoung Cho, 37–74. New York: Routledge, 2022.
• Oh, Young Kyun. “Ch’aek ŭi munhwasa esŏ ponŭn ch’aek ŭi nara Chosŏn” [A Land of Books that is Chosŏn: Views from the Cultural History of Books]. Jangsŏgak no. 44 (2020): 6­–35.
• Oh, Young Kyun. Engraving Virtue: The Printing History of a Premodern Korean Moral Primer. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2013.