Taik Sup Auh has forged a career as a respected educator, administrator and acclaimed textbook author in his native country of South Korea. He came to America in the late 1960s to work at the Korean Embassy in Washington, D.C., and returned to South Korea in 1981 with two post-graduate degrees from Indiana University.
Auh served as the assistant information attaché at the Korean Embassy in Washington, D.C., from 1966 to 1970, shortly after earning his bachelor’s degree in international relations from Seoul National University. He was accepted to IU’s journalism graduate program in 1970, earning his master’s in journalism in 1973 and his doctorate in mass communication in 1977.
With degrees in hand, Auh became an assistant professor at the Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia, where he remained until 1979. In 1981, he returned to South Korea and began his 25-year stay at the Korea University School of Media and Communications. During this time, he held several positions, including professor and dean of graduate studies.
Over the years, Auh has been involved with communications on a national level in South Korea. He has served as a committee chair for the Korean Communications Commission and the chair of the License Renewal Review Committee for Four General Cable-TV in Korea. Auh has been president of both the Korea Cyber Communication Research Society and the Korea Society for Journalism and Communication Studies.
In 2011, the Korean government awarded Auh the Order of Industrial Service Merit Bronze Tower for his role as the chair of the Media Diversity Committee. In this position, Auh contributed to the growth of the media industry in Korea while protecting diversity of opinion across all media platforms.
In addition to offering his expertise in mass communications as an educator and administrator, Auh has shared his knowledge through publications. He has authored and edited five textbooks used at universities across Korea, and he served as editor of the journal Asian Communication Research from 2004-06.
Auh’s research and instruction focus on political communications, theories of cyber communication and research methods. He has written studies about fact checking political statements, how language barriers affect cyber communication and Korean perceptions of the United States.
Auh returned to Indiana University in 1991 as a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study, and again in 2006 as a visiting professor at the School of Journalism. He is currently a professor emeritus at Korea University and a board member at the Seoul Broadcasting System Cultural Foundation.