Samuel E. Martin was a master teacher of Japanese and Korean language and a major force in language learning in the postwar U.S. He received his undergraduate and master's degrees in oriental languages from the University of California at Berkeley and his Ph.D. in linguistics from Yale University. At Yale, he served as chairman of the Department of East and South Asian Languages and Literatures and the Department of Linguistics. He is the author of dozens of books and papers on Japanese and Korean Language, including Basic Japanese and the definitive A Reference Grammar of Japanese and A Reference Grammar of Korean.

Laura Kingdon is a graduate of Yonsei University's Korean Language Institute, so she understands firsthand the complexities of learning Korean grammar. She is fluent in several languages and runs a translation firm. She has designed curricula and taught English as a second language to students of all ages, ranging from university students in Kazakhstan to elementary school children in Korea. After years of living in Seoul, she moved to Thailand. She is the author of Essential Korean Grammar.