With the ever-growing need to understand ourselves and humanity as a whole, it is necessary to examine the concepts of morality, ethics and universal values as guiding principles of the human condition. With generous support from Y.T. Hwang Family Foundation, The Korea Society presents a Series on Ethics and Common Values.

This series promotes the understanding of central themes of our human existence – morality, ethics, personal responsibility, compassion and civility – through a series of lectures by distinguished speakers and conversation with extraordinary individuals who exemplify the universal values in line with the mission of Y. T. Hwang Family Foundation and The Korea Society.

The Korea Society and Y. T. Hwang Family Foundation is proud to present Ilyon Woo in a conversation with Ed Park.

Ilyon Woo is a Korean American, Pulitzer-Prize-winning, New York Times best-selling author of Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom, one of the New York Times’s “10 Best Books of 2023” and People Magazine’s “Top Ten Books of 2023,” also named a best book of the year by The New Yorker, Time, NPR, Smithsonian Magazine, Boston, Chicago Public Library, and Oprah Daily.

Ilyon is also the author of The Great Divorce: A Nineteenth-Century Mother’s Extraordinary Fight Against Her Husband, the Shakers, and Her Times, Her writing has appeared in The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, and The New York Times, and she has received support for her research from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Antiquarian Society, among other institutions. 

Ilyon has traveled the country to speak at bookstores, museums, schools, and book festivals, and she has been featured on such programs as NPR’s Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and CBS Sunday Morning. She holds a BA in the Humanities from Yale College and a PhD in English from Columbia University, where she first came upon the story of William and Ellen Craft.