William E. Skillend Explained

William E. Skillend (26 April 1926 – 21 February 2010) was the first British academic specializing in the Korean language, and the first professor of Korean at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London.^[1]

Skillend was born in Liverpool and went on to study Japanese at Christ's College, Cambridge, where he received a first-class degree and later completed a PhD. He became one of the generation of British orientalists who started as military translators, in his case at Bletchley Park.^[2]

Skillend was responsible for establishing the Association for Korean Studies in Europe (AKSE) in 1977.^[2]

Works

• William E. Skillend, Kodae Sosol: A Survey of Korean Traditional Style Popular Novels (London: School of Oriental and African Studies, 1968).

Notes and References

1. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article7080393.ece Times Obituary
2. William E. Skillend, 'The Early Days, 1947-55', in Richard Bowring (ed.), Fifty years of Japanese at Cambridge, 1948–98: A Chronicle with Reminiscences (Cambridge: Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Cambridge, 1998), pp. 8-15.