David Carter was born in London in 1945 and is of British nationality. He graduated from the University of Wales with a B.A. in German Studies (together with French and Russian) and has also an M.A. in Linguistics and English Language Teaching. His Ph.D. was on Sigmund Freud's theories of creativity and aesthetics. He has been a lecturer at St. Andrews University in Scotland and at the University of Southampton, England, and has also taught at Universiti Malaya, Kuala Lumpur. Since 1991 he has taught English at Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea. He became Professor of Communicative English at Yonsei University, retiring in 2009 to devote himself to writing and translating.

         He has published widely on German Literature, Psychoanalysis, Film History, Linguistics and Applied Linguistics, and has also translated works from several languages into English. Apart from his academic research he also works as a freelance writer and translator, and has published many articles on various aspects of Korean culture and society for The Korea Times, The Korea Herald, The Daily Telegraph (UK), and the Guardian Weekly (UK). He has also been editor for new German and Russian books for The Times Literary Supplement, Times Newspapers Ltd, London.

         He has published numerous books: an introduction to and biography of the Belgian writer Georges Simenon, and a first translation of one of his lesser known works; translations also of works by Klaus Mann and Honoré de Balzac, and a translation together with Kim Chan Young of a volume of short stories by the Korean writer Cho Sun Jak (Asian Humanities Press, USA, 2003). He has also published studies of 'East Asian Cinema', 'The Western', an introduction to 'Literary Theory', and a book on Korean cuisine and culture, books on drama production and acting, and a biography of Balzac. Also published recently were books on the Marquis de Sade, Sigmund Freud and others. In recent years he has also published articles for the long-standing periodical Contemporary Review (Oxford) on such topics as the Korean War, North Korea, nationalism in the Far East, community art in Germany, etc. Due out in later in 2013, is a volume of translated essays by J. J. Winckelmann, Art, Architecture and Archaeology, Camden House, New York.