Kyung Wha Chung (born 1948) led the way for Korean musicians to excel in the western world. Arriving as a child to study in New York City, Chung made the study of the violin her life's work.

On March 26, 1948, Kyung Wha Chung was born in Seoul, Korea, to Won Sook Lee and Chun Chai. She grew up in a family with eight siblings, all of whom had early training in music. They all began with piano lessons. "Both my parents were music lovers," stated Chung on the Asia Week website. "Music was part of our education, and there was always music-making at home." A friend of her father gave her a violin to play at the young age of six. She immediately found she could expr ess herself with the instrument. "The violin," she noted in Asia Week, "is very close to the human voice." Soon she was playing...