His studies were interrupted by service in the United States Army in the late 1940s, when he went to Korea in January 1947 after World War II and the removal of Japanese rule.
According to a biography posted on the Emory University website, "He would say later in life that the experience in Korea so changed his thinking about the world, that by the time he returned to Yale to finish his degree, in 1950, he had determined to enter the ministry.
He then returned to Yale with his wife, Berta Radford Laney, for Korean language study in preparation for entering the mission field.
In 1964, seeing higher education as another facet of his vocation, he entered Yale Graduate School, where he completed his Ph.D. degree in Christian ethics in just two years.
[3] In 1979, two years after he became the university's president, Emory received an identity-changing $105 million gift from Robert W. Woodruff, the former Coca-Cola Company chairman, and his brother George W.
[7] Boosted by these resources, and guided by Laney's strategic vision, Emory transformed itself by hiring preeminent faculty, recruiting some of the best students, and raising its academic standing.
[6] Laney was appointed Ambassador to South Korea by United States President Bill Clinton[8] on October 15, 1993,[4] and presented credentials November 2, 1993.
[4][5] In 2014, the Candler School of Theology created the James T. and Berta Laney Program in Moral Leadership, which supports an endowed professorship in their name.