Story of Dr. Cho -

Dr. Cho 스토리

Story of Dr. Cho

Dr. Cho and DBT Center of Korea

Dr. Yong Cho is a founding member of DBT Center of Korea.
He is a New York State licensed psychologist and has been serving English ex-patriate community in Seoul since 2003.

As a scholar and practitioner, he studies the suffering of human mind,
self-destructive behaviors and religious aspects of psychology.

He has been serving culturally and religiously diverse population for the past decades.
His efforts to serve the under-served population was recognized by New York Times and other medias.

He values the importance of providing the evidence-based psychotherapy for people who are suffering.

Dr. Cho and his DBT team are committed to provide the best DBT treatment in Korea and to save people's lives.

Yong Cho, Ph.D.

CEO of the Tree Group/DBT Center of KoreaㅣChief Psychologist

Dr. Cho is the CEO of the Tree Group. He is a licensed clinical psychologist in the State of New York. He graduated from the University of Utah and received his doctoral degree in Clinical Psychology at the New School for Social Research in New York.

He started his clinical training at the Beth Israel Medical Center in New York and in 1998, he continued his training at the Zucker Hillside Hospital / Long Island Jewish Medical Center.

Around the year of 2000, he introduced DBT (Dialectical Behavior Therapy) to Korean speaking immigrants who were experiencing emotion regulation issues for the first time.

His scholarly background on cultural and religious psychology, and suicide prevention helped him approach the diverse population without prejudice in New York region.

While providing his expert service to Jewish community and general population with European descents, he was saddened by the fact that there were so many under-served Asian population in New York districts.

With the generous help from the Zucker Hillside Hospital and his colleagues, he opened the Asian American Family Clinic at the hospital.

His work was featured in the media, such as New York Times, for providing psychological services to multicultural communities.

In 2003, he was relocated back to Seoul, Korea. He established the Tree group and provided evidence-based treatments, including DBT, PE (Prolonged Exposure) therapy, CBT (Cognitive and Behavioral Therapy) for Korean local communities as well as English speaking ex-patriate communities; those communities had not been served properly with high-quality evidence-based psychological services.

In 2007, Dr. Cho established DBT Center of Korea with the support of its founder, Dr. Marsha Linehan and other experts. His team had completed a full DBT training from Dr. Linehan’s DBT training institute, Behavioral Tech and the team of DBT Center of Korea was being certified. DBT Center of Seattle/Evidence-Based Treatment Center of Seattle provided further supervised training for the team of DBT Korea.

In 2008, he invited Dr. Linehan for the monumental DBT Workshop in Korea. It was Dr. Cho’s mindful intent to provide opportunities for Korean professionals to learn directly from Dr. Linehan and to practice DBT for those suffering clients and patients in Korea.

For the past decades, Dr. Cho and his clinical team have been providing clinical services for clients from both Korean and English-language backgrounds and those with traumas, emotion dysregulation and psychological disorders.

He devoted himself to translate Dr. Linehan’s DBT manuals, the first and second editions. It is his strong belief that without the translated manuals, it is impossible to disseminate DBT for Korean speaking population; and the translation and editors should be the DBT trained bilingual clinicians who have a full original training in the States and have a strong cultural, linguistic and religious backgrounds to understand both Korean and western cultures without bias.

The five-year long project of translating major DBT manuals of Dr. Linehan and the Adolescent DBT manual of Dr. Miller and Dr. Rathus started in 2013 and the team completed the publication in 2018.

His dedication for the under-served population and his pursuit to use his psychological knowledge and skills to relieve suffering has never stopped. For his pro-bono work, in 1995 he developed the first suicide prevention program in the Army of Korea and published the field manual. He outreached the victims of sexual and physical abuse and even torture victims in Korea.

After he came back to Korea, Dr. Cho found so many ex-patriate bilingual children and adolescents who suffer from delay in language transfer and neuro-developmental issues. International schools and boarding schools across the world referred the students whose English capacity could not be improved with their typical western learning disorder or speech-language approach.

Their language delay triggered several emotional, behavioral, social difficulties. Dr. Cho observed those kids and their parents who were suffering deeply. He could not abandon their cry for help and thus, supported them with the treatment programs that facilitate language development and academic adjustment.

Dr. Cho, the path he walk, is the path for pain and suffering; the DBT and Marsha Linehan’s philosophy, he believed, are the non-detachable companion of his walk to save people from their suffering.

Dr. Cho has always been open-minded. DBT Center of Korea welcomes anyone who approches us with mindful and scientific state of mind.

– Licensed Clinical Psychologist in New York (#015603)

– Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology at New School for Social Research, New York

– M.A. in Psychology at New School for Social Research, New York

– B.S. in Psychology at University of Utah

Clinical Training & Former Positions

– Adjunct Professor at Ewha Women’s University

– President of the Open Clinic for Human Rights Victims

– Clinical Psychologist at the Zucker Hillside Hospital / North Shore Long Island Health System, New York

– Clinical Psychology Doctoral Internship at the Zucker Hillside Hospital / North Shore Long Island Health System, New York

– Clinical Psychology Externship at the Zucker Hillside Hospital / North Shore Long Island Health System, New York

– Clinical Psychology Externship at Beth Israel Medical Center, New York