Hugh Hi-Woong Kang—emeritus professor at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, a trailblazing Korea historian in the U.S., a visionary builder of the Korean studies discipline, and a loving partner, father and grandfather—died on July 16, at the age of 92, in South Korea.
As a scholar of ancient and medieval Korea, he was one of the first Korea historians to become a faculty member in a history department in the U.S. when he joined UH Mānoa’s Department of History in 1965. With Yong-ho Ch’oe, who joined the history faculty in 1970, Kang helped UH Mānoa become the first university in the U.S. to grant a PhD in Korean history.
In 1971, Kang organized a historic international conference on Korean studies in Honolulu, the earliest conference of its kind in the world and an event reported widely in Hawaiʻi and South Korea. He was also a principal figure in the founding of the Center for Korean Studies at the university in 1972, the first Korean studies center outside of South Korea. In 1990, he helped to establish the International Society for Korean Studies, the only global Korean studies organization that is regularly attended by scholars from South Korea and North Korea. Even after retirement in 2003, Kang remained committed to building Korean studies worldwide.
Kang penned the seminal historical work Institutional Borrowing: The Case of the Chinese Civil Service System in Early Koryoŏ. In collaboration with his former student and Emeritus Professor Edward Shultz, he translated and edited some of the most important foundational books in premodern Korean history, including The Silla Annals of the Samguk Sagi, The Koguryŏ Annals of the Samguk Sagi, The Essentials of Koryoŏ History and Sources of Korean Tradition.
In an interview with South Korea’s daily The Kyunghyang Shinmun in 2012, Kang spoke about the role of scholars in the development of Korean studies.
“Our role is to discover how Korean culture and history are connected to universal values of truth, goodness, and aesthetics and to explain the connections in a systematic way. If we can find the universal values from our culture, then our culture can resonate anywhere in the world,” he said.
Kang’s brilliance, generosity and camaraderie will be dearly missed, colleagues said. He was dedicated to his family and friends. He relished seafood and enjoyed tennis, golf and walks in nature. Kang is survived by his two daughters, nieces, nephews and their families. A memorial will be held at the UH Mānoa Center for Korean Studies in the fall.
For more on Kang’s legacy, visit the Center for Korean Studies website.
