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Joseph Cho

American politician (born 1943)

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 13, 2026
Entity authorityQ112022941
Source-derived summary

Joseph J. Cho (born February 16, 1943) is an American politician who served eight years as a councilmember and mayor of Cerritos, Los Angeles County, California, and ran twice as a candidate for the California State Senate.

Early life

Jae-gil "Joseph" Cho was born on February 16, 1943, in Kyushu, Japan, the eldest son of Cho Rong-hwan and Jeon Jeon-ae, both Korean laborers. In 1944, his parents returned to his hometown of Danyang County, Chungcheongbuk-do, and registered his birth.

He grew up in Judeok-myeon, Chungju-gun, Chungcheongbuk-do, and Buksang-ri, Danyang-gun, and graduated from Danyang Middle School, Andong Normal School, and Seoul National University. He was commissioned as a major in the Republic of Korea Air Force in 1967, and served as a correspondence officer for the three chiefs of staff, Kim Sung-ryong, Kim Doo-man, and Ok Man-ho, at the Air Force Headquarters, and retired as a lieutenant in 1972.

Before and after his Air Force service, he worked as a teacher for four years at Osan High School in Gyeonggi-do and Boseong High School in Seoul. He and his wife, Sookhye "Lucy" Kwon, whom he married in 1972, moved to the United States in 1974.

Life and career in the United States

Cho settled in Los Angeles, California, on July 5, 1974; he worked as a janitor and gas station attendant. In 1975, he was hired by the Los Angeles County Department of Computing, where he quickly rose from computer operator to a manager-level programmer in three years, a position that would take most Americans more than a decade to reach.

He received several offers from electronics companies, including JPL in Pasadena, but resigned from Los Angeles County in 1978 to pursue a successful real estate business in Cerritos, which became his second home.

Editorial summary

“Joseph Cho” enters the record as american politician (born 1943). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Joseph, American and politician can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewStrongest as a route into the people, institutions and dated events that shaped the subject’s public record. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1943, 1944, 1967, 1972—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1943-02-16. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Joseph, American and politician.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Joseph Cho” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Joseph, American and politician provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q112022941. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1943, 1944, 1967 and 1972.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

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  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
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Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Joseph Cho”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Joseph Cho primary sources, Joseph Cho archive and Joseph research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Joseph Cho” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.