Seungho Yang was born in 1955 in Taean, a village on Korea's Yellow Sea. He began learning ceramics and wood firing in 1974 in the potters' village of Ichon, not far from the capital.
Trained at Dankook University in Seoul from 1978, Seungho Yang left for England in 1981. It was during this stay that he accidentally discovered his surface cracking technique, while unfolding a crumpled piece of wet ceramics picked up from the ground. He was struck by the cracks in the piece and the beauty of the earth in its natural state.
From then on, his quest was to “leave earth and fire in their natural state”. Seungho Yang uses no artificial decoration, no glaze on the surface, and provokes material effects in search of the appearance of natural elements, minerals, bark, dry earth, woven bamboo.
In 1983, he settled near La Borne, a potters' village in central France with a wood-firing tradition dating back to the mid-16th century. There, he built his own Tongkama kiln, using a proprietary process based on local earth and sand. Two years later, he built a second kiln in Emmental, Switzerland.
Since the 2000s, he has lived and worked between France, Switzerland and Korea, and every summer organizes a festival in France dedicated to Tongkama firing, attracting numerous artists and collectors.
Seungho Yang's work has been exhibited in many countries, including Korea, France, Switzerland, Germany and England. His work can also be found in the public collections of many museums in Korea, France, Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Lithuania and England.