Dr. Hak-Lim Ko

My father, Dr. Hak-Lim Ko was born and raised in Incheon, South Korea. He attended Soongsil University as an undergraduate in Electronics Engineering and participated as a drummer in the school's rock band. He decides that he needs more education to further peruse his dreams and heads off to the land of the free. After wrapping up his masters studies in New Jersey, Mr. and Mrs. Ko decide to move down to North Carolina for Mr. Ko's doctorate studies. However, it was only after a few months when the two came back to Korea for Mr. Ko to finish his military service. Thanks to Korea's un-flexible laws back then, Mr. Ko spends 3.5 years in the Republic of Korea Air Force as a first lieutenant and returns back to Raleigh to restart his doctoral studies. After approximately five years of hard work, Dr. Ko successfully defends his thesis entitled, A HIGH PERFORMANCE PARALLEL ARCHITECTURE FOR ADAPTIVE BEAMFORMING. After thanking his advisor, Dr. Winser Alexander, and saying good bye to many friends in Raleigh, Dr. Ko returns back to Korea to join LG Semiconductors. After six months as a manager at LG, Dr. Ko decides to take a faculty position at Hoseo University where he still remains until now.

Mrs. Ok-Kyeong K. Ko

My mother, Mrs. Ok-Kyeong K. Ko, was born in the same year as Dr. Ko in Incheon, South Korea. A big change in her life happens when she meets Dr. Ko in the first year of college at ROTRACT. The two dated for about 4 years and got married as they graduated college. Ms. Ko (Kim at that point), worked as a Kindergarten teacher in Incheon before moving to New Jersey with Mr. Ko. Mrs. Ko gave her full support to Mr. Ko during his service in the Korean Air Force and also while he was pursuing his Ph.D. Her support at home was especially helpful for the two kids at home, JeongGil and Anna, while the latter turned out to be a total disaster (details below). Mrs. Ko is currently enjoying her life with her husband, Dr. Ko and her friends in Cheonan, South Korea. She holds a much better golf score record than Dr. Ko, providing sufficient evidence that a Ph.D. degree cannot help you succeed with everything in your life but a more expensive golf club can.

Ms. Anna Ko

Finally, the biggest mistake in our family's history, Ms. Anna Ko, my younger sister. Born 5 years after I appeared on the face of the earth, Anna decides to be the bully in the house. Or shall I say, a magician. Everything that she asks for, happens. Now, back to the bio, Ms. Anna Ko moved to the US with the family when she was 1. Her only dream as a child was to ride the yellow school bus to school, which never happened because the family moved back to Korea when she was five. After multiple years of stubbornness, wanting to go back to the US, Anna's dreams come true as Dr. Ko leaves for sabbatical to Arizona. Being back at the land of her dreams Anna enjoys two wonderful years with her friends in Phoenix until she sadly returns to Korea to attend Bokja Girls' High School. Both Anna and Mrs. Ko did not want to go through to chaotic Korean college entrance procedures and decide to apply to college as an English specialist whom are admitted through an entirely different procedure. Despite her terrible English compared to other English specialists, the small leaks in Korean colleges' admission systems allows Anna to join one of Korea's most well known institutions, the Hankuk University of Foreign Studies where she is currently spending her third year.