Chung Young Mok is from Okcheon, North Chungcheong Province, the author was born in 1953. After his graduation from Seoul High School, he received a B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. in art history from the University of Illinois. His doctoral dissertation was entitled, “Max Beckmann’s Paintings on Biblical Themes, 1906-1918.” He taught as an associate professor in the department of art at Sookmyung Women’s University. Since 1993, he has been teaching in the art department of Seoul National University with his primary focus being on the method of visual perception and the analysis of art from a socio-political perspective. He has served as the director of Seoul National University Gallery, director of Seoul National University Visual Arts Institute as well as president of the Academy of Western Art History and the Academy of Korean Art Theory. He has also served as judge and critic in many art programs, such as the P.S. 1 (New York) Program, Yi Jung-seop Art Award, and the Hoam Award in the art category. He has curated the following exhibitions: “Zeigeist,” an opening show at the new National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul in 2013 and the special exhibition in commemoration of the 60th Anniversary of the Korean War Armistice: “Re-enactment of Memory,” “Seo Yong-seon and 6.25” at the Korea University Museum and the First Anniversary Memorial Exhibition of Roh Moo-hyun, “Beyond the Yellow,” in 2010 as well as many others exhibitions. He is currently active as the member of the Council of National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, director of both the Jang Uk-jin Art Foundation and Yu Yeung-guk Art Foundation. 

He is the author of Modern Western Art History 1870-1945, Jang Uk-jin: Catalogue Raisonné, Politics of Gaze: the World of Seo Yong-seon, Three Women In Search of Joseon, and Postmodern Art in Korea. 

His major writings are on “The Analysis and Embracing of Postmodernism in Korea,” “The Abstractness of Modern Korean Painting, 1950-1970: In the Name of Avant-garde,” “Picasso and the Korean War,” “Around the Massacre in Korea,” “Korean Modern Historical Painting: Its Nature and Status,” “Modern Korean Art and Cultural Colonialism: Around the Relation of Korea and Japan, “Early Abstraction of Yu Yeung-guk, 1937-1949,” and “Critical biography of Louis Pal Chang, 1946-1953.”