Chang Young-hee


Jang Yeong-hui was a South Korean professor, scholar, translator, and essayist.

Biography

Chang was born to father Chang Wang-rok, a noted scholar of English literature, and mother Yi Gil-ja in Seoul in 1952. When she was one year old, she suffered poliomyelitis, which caused paralysis of both legs and right arm. She majored in English literature at Sogang University and finished her undergraduate and graduate studies in 1975 and 1977. She received a doctoral degree from State University of New York at Buffalo in 1985 with the thesis titled Journeys between Real and the Ideal. Since 1985, Chang had worked as a professor at the department of English literature, Sogang University. She wrote columns for Korea Times and JoongAng Ilbo respectively since 1987 and 2001. Chang also had served as an executive director and editor for the Korea Hawthorne Society since 1995 and the Korea Mark Twain Society since 2003.
After being diagnosed with breast cancer in 2001, Chang had two surgeries and chemotherapy to remove the tumor. However, Chang died of spinal cancer at Yonsei Severance Hospital on May 9, 2009. It was metastasized from breast cancer after her eight years' struggling against the disease.

Works

Authored books