Young Yang Chung is a textile historian and embroiderer. She earned a Ph.D. at New York University in 1976, with a doctoral dissertation on the origins of embroidery and its historical development of China, Japan, and Korea, and has lectured worldwide on the topic of East Asian embroidery. Through lectures, demonstrations, writings, teaching, workshops, and exhibitions of her work, she has endeavored to foster appreciation of an art form often stigmatized as "women's work" and to challenge the notion of textiles as "minor arts".
Chung received an honorary doctorate degree from Sookmyung University, Seoul, South Korea in 2001 and she was awarded a Distinguished Alumna Achievement Award by New York University's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development at the 2013 Doctoral Convocation.
Chung has dedicated her life to the textile arts, not only as an embroiderer and teacher of this art form but also as a historian of traditional East Asian textiles and a collector of outstanding examples. Her embroideries are included in the collections of numerous museums in the world including the Smithsonian Institution and the presidential palaces.