Developer of the first Internet in Asia, called SDN, Chon is a pioneering computer scientist and network engineer. He was born and raised in Japan and completed his education in the US. After receiving a Bachelor's Degree in Engineering from Japan's Osaka University in 1965, he enrolled in the fledgling Computer Science program at the University of California at Los Angeles, where many say the Internet was born. Chon received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1974.
He worked at Rockwell International as a distributed computer system designer during the late 1960s, and at Jet Propulsion Laboratory as Member of Technical Staff in the area of advanced mission control in the late 1970s. Chon also joined the Korea Institute of Electronics Technology in 1979 to work on computer system development, and moved to Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in 1982 as a Professor in the Computer Science Department. A research university located in Daejeon, South Korea, KAIST is the nation's leading science and technology institution and is considered the MIT of South Korea. He has also served as a Professor at Keio University, Japan's very first private institution of higher learning, teaching at both institutions.
He worked on network systems including the Internet from the early 1980s, developing the first Internet in Asia, called SDN, in 1982, and organizing the first Internet conference, called PCCS, in 1985. Chon is also the founding father of multiple organizations that still drive the Asian internet—including the Asia Pacific Networking Group (APNG) and Asia Pacific Top Level Domain Name Forum (APTLD). He has served as founding Chair of the Asia Pacific Advanced Network (APAN), the backbone network that connects the research and education networks of its member countries/economies to each other and to other research networks around the world, and he co-chaired the Coordination Committee of Intercontinental Research Networking (CCIRN).
In recognition of his role in bringing the continent online, Chon was inducted into the inaugural class of the Internet Society's (ISOC) Internet Hall of Fame, alongside such names as Vint Cerf, Van Jacobson, Steve Crocker, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, and Elizabeth Feinler. He established a company named Networking, Inc. in 2000 to offer a vision of the information society and infrastructure through incubating companies based on knowledge of and networking with globally competitive technology groups.
