Ken W. Y. Cho was born in 1956 in Seoul, South Korea; the eldest of three siblings. His father, a shrewd entrepreneur from a very modest background and his mother, the daughter of a well-to-do Korean family, both fled North Korea in 1945, following the Soviet takeover at the end of World War II. Cho's parents would later meet and marry in South Korea and eventually move to Japan when he was only five years old. Cho was therefore forced to learn Japanese rapidly in order to excel in the rigorous educational environment. His childhood interest in the sciences came from watching his favorite cartoon about a scientist. Cho received his B.A. in Chemistry from Grinnell College in 1979. He elected to attend an undergraduate institution in the United States based on the advice of a family friend and because his Korean heritage severely limited his career options in Japan. Once again Cho was forced to rapidly assimilate a new language and culture, and often spent entire nights just completing reading assignments and homework. He matriculated into the Department of Molecular Biology at the University of Pennsylvania, where he conducted his research in Roberto Weinmann's lab at the Wistar Institute, and received his PhD in 1985. Cho began his postdoctoral research at the University of California, Los Angeles in 1986 in Dr. Edward M. De Robertis's Lab, where he became interested in homeobox genes and their role in the development of embryos. He studied these homeobox genes in Drosophila before switching to Xenopus and creating a cDNA library that would shed light on several new developmentally crucial genes; most notably goosecoid genes. In 1991 Cho was appointed assistant professor in the Department of Developmental and Cell Biology at the University of California, Irvine. His research there has encompassed an interest in the regulation of homeobox genes and goosecoid genes in the context of embryological development in vertebrates. Most of his research focuses on the implications of these genes on a specific group of embryological cells in amphibians, a group known as Spemann's Organizer. Throughout his oral history Cho stresses the importance of choosing a career that one truly loves, and he hopes that his children will be happy in whatever career path they choose. He has received several award and grants, including a March of Dimes Basil O'Conner Starter Research Scholar award, an American Cancer Society Junior Faculty Research award, and most notably a Pew Scholars Program in the Biomedical Sciences grant, which he discusses in the oral history interview.