Born in a village near Seoul the year the Korean War ended with armistice without peace, and the continued division of the country, Yong Soon Min calls herself a Cold War baby. At age seven, she immigrated with her mother and brother to join their father in Monterey, CA. Min became Asian Pacific/Korean American in New York City during the 80s where she cut her political teeth.
Most notably, Min received Fulbright Senior Research Grant, COLA Individual Artist Fellowship from the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department, Korea Foundation Grant, Anonymous Was a Woman Award, Guggenheim Foundation grant and National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Visual Artist Award in New Genre. Significant exhibitions have been The Decade Show; decolonization, Bronx Museum; Across the Pacific: Contemporary Korean and Korean American Art, Queens Museum and Kumho Museum, Seoul; Asia/America: Identities in Contemporary Asian American Art, Asia Society and travelled; Bride of No Return- solo exhibition that travelled to three spaces including Art in General; the 4th and 10th Havana Bienal; 7th Gwangju Biennale; 3rd Guangzhou Triennial; Museum of Modern Art, NYC; Smith College Museum; LACMA (Los Angeles); Seoul Museum of Art and Commonwealth and Council gallery. Among exhibitions she has curated are: Memories of Overdevelopment: Contemporary Art in the Philippine Diaspora; THERE: Sites of Korean Diaspora for 4th Gwangju Biennale and transPOP: Korea Vietnam Remix held in Seoul, Ho Chi Minh City, Irvine, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco.
Min served on the Board of Directors of Asian American Arts Alliance, national Board of Directors of CAA, and Korean American Museum. She currently serves on Artists Board of Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA LA) and the steering committee of GYOPO. She is now Professor Emerita at UC Irvine, with MFA from UC Berkeley, followed by a postdoc at Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program.