Born in Brookline, Massachusetts, Palais graduated from Harvard University in 1955 with a bachelor's degree in American history.
He learned Korean in the army at the Monterey Language Institute; and this sparked an interest in East Asia.
[5] His dissertation was published under the title Politics and Policies in Traditional Korea[6] by Harvard University Press in 1975.
Palais continued his activity at the University of Washington with editing, writing, and part-time teaching in the Korea Studies Program until hospitalized with his final illness in the spring of 2005.
[2] In a statistical overview derived from writings by and about James Palais, OCLC/WorldCat encompasses roughly 10+ works in 50+ publications in 3 languages and 1,300+ library holdings.