Cho is a cultural anthropologist (Professor Emeritus of Yonsei University, Director of Haja Center). She graduated from Yonsei University’s Department of History before she received her M.A. in anthropology from the University of Missouri and her Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles. After returning to Korea in 1979, Cho has taught at Yonsei University and has been actively involved in social movements and writing. She has focused on the exploration of the transformation times of Korean modern history, particularly on the public as a creative commons shared by people. Since the early 1980s, Cho has worked as a member of a feminist group called Alternative Culture that tries to create alternative culture in Korea. After the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s, she founded the Seoul Youth Factory for Alternative Culture (aka, Haja Center, 1999) which is an alternative cultural studio and creative public area for teenagers. Recently, she suggested a solution to ever more confusing changes in today’s world through the concept of ‘villages, that revitalized local communities or networks. Since 2012, she serves as the chairperson of the ‘Village Community Committee, which is one of the major transitional projects of Seoul Metropolitan City. She is the author of many books including Women and Men in South Korea (1988), three volumes of Reading Texts, Reading Lives in the Postcolonial Era (1992, 1994), Children Refusing School, Society Refusing Children (1996), Reflexive Modernity and Feminism (1998), Children Searching School, Society Searching Children (2000), It’s Life-Learning Village Again (2007), and Jagonggong: for Villages of Reciprocity (2014).
