Kyoim Yun studies shamanism, verbal art, Korean/East Asian folklore, anthropology, and popular culture.
Yun earned her B.A. in Korean language and literature (1992) and her M.A. in Korean literature (1996) from Sogang University in Seoul, and her Ph.D. in Folklore from Indiana University (2007). She taught Folklore and Korean language courses at Indiana University, Bloomington, and Anthropology and Popular Cultures of East Asia at Indiana-Purdue University, Indianapolis, before joining KU in the fall of 2007. She served as guest editor for the special issue of Folklore Forum 38, no. 1 (2008) on Folklore of East Asia and serves on the editorial board of The Journal of Shamanic Practice: Exploring Traditional and Contemporary Shamanism, an international peer-reviewed journal.
Yun has published both in English and Korean. “The 2002 World Cup and a Local Festival in Cheju: Global Dreams and the Commodification of Shamanism” appeared in the Journal of Korean Studies 11, no. 1 (Fall 2006): 7-40 and “Research on Verbal Art in the United States: The Performance-centered Approach and the Ethnography of Oral Poetics” in the Journal of Korean Oral Literature 15 (2002): 249–82.