Dr. Je-Hun Ryu earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin. He has been on the faculty of the Department of Geography, Korea National University of Education since 1987, and was a visiting scholar at the Institute of Chinese Historical Geography, Fudan University in China, from 1996 to 1997. He is the author of two books: A Historical Geography of Modernization: Honam Plain in Korea and A Historical Geography of China (both in Korean). He dedicated this book to his late mentor, Dr. Paul Ward English who wrote A Question of Place: World Regional Geography.