John Frankl, an American professor who first came to Yonsei University as an exchange student in 1988, became dean of its Underwood International College in spring 2026. The appointment, after more than two decades on the faculty, puts a foreign-born academic in charge of one of the largest colleges at one of South Korea’s leading universities.
Frankl grew up in Santa Cruz, California, and began learning Korean partly through an interest in martial arts. He studied at UC Berkeley, which ran an exchange programme with Yonsei, then took a master’s at Yonsei and a doctorate at Harvard. He now teaches Korean and comparative literature. In 2005 former colleagues recruited him to a planned international college. He signed a three-year contract warily but was won over within a year or two, saying the university president “was putting resources into it”.
The college has grown a great deal since then. It was raised from a division to Yonsei’s 22nd standalone college, alongside medicine and business, and is now the second-largest after engineering. It is the only Korean university programme on Forbes’ 2026 list of 15 international colleges for US students. Its English-language liberal arts curriculum requires courses in world history, world literature and philosophy, and Frankl says generative AI makes that emphasis on writing and critical thinking more relevant. In his own classes he has gone back to handwritten essays done in the room.
Frankl told The Korea Herald that his appointment came later than it might have, with junior colleagues named dean before him. He believes some at the university were hesitant about an international faculty member leading the college, partly because senior administration largely works in Korean. Yonsei president Yoon Dong-sup asked him to take the role and repeatedly stressed harmony in a college that has expanded quickly. Frankl’s goal is to make the college less of an exception, with clearer and more transparent decision-making that runs through majors and divisions rather than informal channels.
He describes Yonsei as ahead of other Korean universities in opening up, while still improving. He urges international students and staff to learn the language and culture and to meet Korea partway. His advice to students is to avoid treating his career as a template, since it was never planned, and to focus on “excellence and sincerity” while staying ready to change direction.
