Life

His father, Han Ki-ak, joined the February 8 Declaration of Independence in Tokyo in 1919, distributed the Declaration during the March First Movement, then fled to Shanghai, where he sat in the first Provisional Legislative Assembly of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea.

Back home he took up the pen. He helped found the Dong-A Ilbo, became the first editor-in-chief of the Sidae Ilbo and later editor-in-chief of the Chosun Ilbo, and in 1927 was a founding member of the Singanhoe. In 1990 he was posthumously awarded the Order of Merit for National Foundation, Patriotic Medal.

He was born in Seoul on 26 June 1921, the eldest son; his mother was Nam Hui-jeong. Three younger brothers followed: Man-nyeon, Man-jeung and Man-cheong. Han Man-nyeon later founded the publishing house Ilchokak, and Han Man-cheong became director of Seoul National University Hospital.

Known as a prodigy from childhood, he went from Gyeongseong First Higher Common School to the electrical engineering department of Keijō Imperial University’s Faculty of Science and Engineering. In 1941, he lost his father.

In 1943 he graduated with the department’s first class and went straight to the Joseon Electric Power Company, where he served as chief of planning and then of power generation.

After liberation, in 1947, he became a founding member of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers. The following year, at twenty-seven, he was appointed professor of electrical engineering at Seoul National University. He later also taught at Chonbuk National University and the Inha Institute of Technology.

In 1955 he joined Yonsei University’s College of Science and Engineering as professor of electrical engineering. In 1958 he went to the University of Nottingham as Korea’s first government-funded student in a nuclear-related field.

In 1961 he received his doctorate for research in reactor control, Korea’s first Ph.D. in electrical engineering. The work applied electrical control theory to the stability of nuclear power.

Until he turned to translating and writing, university lectures in electrical engineering relied on Japanese and American textbooks. Beginning with a translation of AC Circuits in 1960, he published Distribution Engineering (1963), Power Generation Engineering (1964), Power Transmission Engineering, Automatic Control Theory and Exercises in Electrical Theory (1973).

In 1981 came Introduction to Computer Science and Automatic Control Systems: groundwork for a discipline, laid in Korean.

In 1961, the year of his doctorate, he and his students completed the Yonsei 101 analog computer. It was Korea’s first, built from military surplus parts gathered in the junk shops of Cheonggyecheon.

Its vacuum-tube electronics performed higher calculus in real time. It went on to serve research on power-system stability, controller design and the safety of nuclear power.

Having brought control-engineering ideas into power systems, in the early 1970s he set out the theoretical case for raising distribution voltage to 220/380 volts. The conversion began in 1973 and was completed thirty-two years later, in 2005.

In the same years he was president of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers (1973–1976) and chair of the Korean National Committee of the IEC. He received the Order of Industrial Service Merit (1972), the Seoul Culture Award (1977) and the Order of Civil Merit, Dongbaek Medal (1981).

At Yonsei he was the first head of the engineering division, then dean of the College of Science and Engineering, dean of the Graduate School of Industry and director of the Institute of Industrial Technology. He was building the foundations of industry–university cooperation when he died suddenly on 5 August 1984, aged sixty-three.

Two years later, his students founded a prize bearing his pen name.