YOUNGSUK “YS” CHI is an international businessman and a leader in the media and technology industry. He’s currently a non-executive Chairman of Elsevier, the world’s leading publisher of science and health information. He also serves as the Director of Corporate Affairs and Asia Strategy for RELX, a parent company of Elsevier and LexisNexis. Previously, Mr. Chi recently served as Chairman of the Association of American Publishers and as the President of the International Publishers Association. Mr. Chi has also served on dozens of charitable, educational and industry boards, including Princeton University, South Federal State University, the Korean American Community Foundation and McCarter Theatre.
Early in his career, as Chief Operating Officer of Ingram Book Group, he founded Lightning Source, the first ever print-on-demand distributor and e-book services provider. After holding several senior executive positions at Ingram Book Group’s parent company, he became President and Chief Operating Officer of Random House. He has also earned widespread respect for his ability to work across cultures. As founding Chairman of Random House Asia, he led efforts to make Random House the first foreign trade book publisher with local language publishing in Japan and Korea.
DANIEL DAE KIM is an actor, director and now, producer. Through the diversity of his roles on stage and screen, Daniel Dae Kim continues to expand the public’s perception of the Asian-Americans. He is best known for portraying Jin Soo Kwon on the ABC mega-hit show “Lost,” and Chin Ho Kelly for seven seasons on “Hawaii Five-0.” He has guest-starred on numerous TV shows, including “CSI,” “ER,” “24,” “Star Trek” and Emmy Award-nominated miniseries “The Andromeda Strain.” Mr. Kim is the founder of the film and TV production company called 3AD, which now produces the ABC TV series The Good Doctor (based on the 2013 TV series of the same name).
Born in Busan, South Korea, and raised in New York and Pennsylvania, Kim discovered acting while he was a student at Haverford College. After briefly considering a career as an attorney, he decided to follow his true passion and moved to New York City, where he began his work on stage, performing in classics such as “Romeo and Juliet,” “Ivanov” and “A Doll’s House,” as well as acting with an improv comedy troupe.
DR. PETER H. LEE is a Professor Emeritus of Korean & Comparative Literature at the University of California, Los Angeles. Professor Lee is an academic pioneer, credited with single-handedly developing the field of Korean literature, especially in a comparative context in the West. He also made important contributions to Korean studies more broadly, by spearheading the development of a series of basic reference tools and comprehensive anthologies that have been crucial to training a generation of students.
Dr. Lee’s prolific output has also been instrumental in building the field of Korean studies more generally. Among his edited books, his massive two-volume Sourcebook of Korean Civilization (Columbia UP, 1993-96), represents the first comprehensive anthology of Korean culture from early times through the modern period to appear in any language other than Korean. Dr. Lee has also compiled and edited anthologies of Korean literature, including an anthology of classical Korean literature, classical poetry, modern poetry, modern fiction, and a comprehensive anthology of modern Korean literature in all the major genres.
Dr. Lee was born and grew up in Seoul and received his graduate degrees from Yale and Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich (1958). He also studied at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland, at the universities of Milan and Florence, and at Oxford. He taught at Columbia and the University of Hawaii, was a visiting professor at UC Berkeley, and served as a Distinguished Scholar at Peking University under the auspices of the National Academy of Sciences. Dr. Lee retired in 2007 after a teaching career of 47 years but is still active in advising graduate students and doing his own research and publication.