Oh entered Kyunggi High School of Gangnam District in 1968 and graduated in 1971.

Staying in California, Oh worked as a researcher at the Palo Alto Institute of Xerox until 1984, in which he returned to Korea to work as a professor at the Department of Physics and Astronomy in Seoul National University (SNU).

Returning to SNU, he was the head of the Planning Lab under the College of National Sciences.

He later served as the director of the Multi-Systems Research Center for Excellence of the Ministry of Science and Technology with the last several years overlapping as the director and later vice chairman of the Korean Federation of Science and Technology Societies.

Oh worked in politics before again applying for and eventually getting the position at SNU as the 27th president[3] He was inaugurated on February 8, 2019.