Gari Keith Ledyard was born in
Syracuse, New York in 1932, while his family happened to be in Syracuse for work during the
Depression. He grew up in Detroit and
Ann Arbor, Michigan, and moved with his family to
San Rafael, California, in 1948. After high school, he attended the
University of Michigan and
San Francisco State College, but did not do well, and in 1953 he joined the army to avoid the draft. Luckily, he missed so much basic training due to illness that he had to repeat it, and during that time opportunities opened up for language training, one of his interests. Ledyard was scheduled for one year intensive
Russian language training at the
Army Language School in
Monterey, but was soon reassigned to Korean. He graduated too high in his class to be sent to Korea, but after a few months was able to get a posting in Tokyo in July 1955, and then a transfer to
Seoul in November. While there, he looked up the families of his Korean teachers, ate in town, and taught at the
American Language Institute. When his superiors found out, he was accused of
fraternization and reassigned to Tokyo, after only nine months in Korea, and returned to the US in December. The next spring he enrolled in the
University of California at Berkeley, in Chinese language and
literature, studying under, among others,
Peter Alexis Boodberg and
Zhao Yuanren, as there was no Korean Studies program in the United States at the time. For his bachelor's degree in 1958 he translated the
Hunmin Jeongeum Haerye into English; for his master's degree in 1963 he documented early Korean–Mongol diplomatic relations; and with a year for research in Seoul for his dissertation, he received his PhD in 1966 and a position at Columbia, at the Centre for Korean Research, succeeding
William E. Skillend. He was made a full professor in 1977, and retired in 2001. Ledyard's dissertation was
The Korean Language Reform of 1446, on
King Sejong's alphabet project, but concerned with the political implications and controversies of hangul as much as its creation. Unfortunately, he failed to copyright his dissertation, and it was distributed in
microfilm and photocopy, so that he could not copyright it and publish without substantial revision. He was finally convinced to do so by the first director of the
National Academy of the Korean Language,
Ki-Moon Lee, and the book was published in Korea in 1998. Ledyard also published on Korean
cartography, the alliance between Korea and China during the first
Japanese invasions, and the relationship between the wars of the
Three Kingdoms and the founding of the
Japanese state from Korea. He also wrote a book about the journal written by the 17th century Dutch explorer
Hendrick Hamel who was held hostage in Korea for 13 years. The title of this book is 'The Dutch come to Korea' and was first published in 1971. He was invited to visit North Korea in 1988. Ledyard died from complications of Alzheimer's disease at his home, on October 29, 2021, at the age of 89. ==Research on the origin of hangul==