Gary Rector (1943-2018) was an American Korean copywriter, editor, translator, and former Peace Corps Volunteer in South Korea. Born on June 11, 1943, in Toledo, Ohio, he spent his childhood in Kentucky and the high school years in Ohio. He attended Kalamazoo College, a small liberal arts college in Kalamazoo, Michigan where he majored in languages and linguistics. During the college years, he studied abroad at the University of Caen, France.

After graduation, Gary worked at the Gibson guitar factory in Kalamazoo before applying to the Peace Corps. He arrived in Korea at the end of 1967 as a member of the fourth class of Peace Corp Volunteers (“Korea IV”), which was the first Peace Corps public health program in Korea.

He served his initial two years in Ch’ongdo, a mountainous remote rural village near Taegu, North Kyongsang Province. When the Korea IV program evolved from general assistance with vaccinations, TB control, and family planning to focus specifically on tuberculosis control, Gary asked for a transfer to a city that had health centers with that mission. He served his third year at a health center and a TB clinic in Taegu. When his three-year Peace Corps service was complete, Gary chose to stay in Korea, moving from Daegu to Seoul. He remained connected with the Peace Corps on some temporary assignments, such as assisting in training programs for later groups of volunteers. He became a naturalized Korean citizen in 1994.

From the 1970s to the 2000s, Gary engaged in various activities applying his exceptional linguistic expertise in reading, writing, and speaking Korean. He was active in the Korea Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, and published a scholarly article, “Accent and Vowel Length in Korean,” in Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society Korea Branch, 75:43 (2000). While working for the Language Teaching Research Center, he helped to create materials for Korean language textbooks. He also worked as a copywriter, editor, and translator for LG Ad (formerly Heesung Advertising). He regularly published columns on Korea for ten years in various media including Lucky-Goldstar Monthly Bulletin, KAFA Friendship , The Korea Times, Newsweek Magazine, etc. For a time, he played the Korean-speaking role of a foreigner in Korea in a television drama/sitcom series.

After falling in love with Korean traditional farmer’s music (Samulnori) in early years in Korea, he spent much time learning and playing Korean traditional music, especially the farmers’ dance and the janggu (a double headed drum in the shape of hourglass) throughout his life in Korea. At the time of his death on September 17, 2018, in Seoul, Korea, he had started on a personal project to publish a book collecting many of his writings for Newsweek.