Professor Yang is the Chair of Surgery in the National Cancer Centre in Seoul, which is one of the highest volume gastric cancer centres in the world. They perform on average 1000 gastric cancer surgeries annually in the Division of Gastrointestinal Surgery, Seoul National University Hospital. He is a leading academic gastric cancer surgeon, proficient in laparoscopic and robotic UGI surgery.

Professor Yang is involved in several large scale RCT’s for gastric cancer treatment. He was Korean PI of REGATTA study (Phase III study for the role of gastrectomy in stage IV gastric cancer with a single incurable factor; a collaboratory study between JCOG and KGCA). He is an investigator in the CLASSIC and KLASS trials as well as the Korean PI of a phase II study for the role of neoadjuvant imatinib treatment in large gastric GIST (a collaborator study between Japan and Korea). He is the founding chairman of KLASS (Korean Laparoscopic Gastrointestinal Surgery Study Group) and contributed in MIS in gastric cancer especially Function preserving gastrectomy (pylorus preserving gastrectomy). His translational research interests are gastric carcinogenesis, DDS, familial gastric cancer, biomarkers and developing PDX model for gastric cancer.

He is Secretary General of International Gastric Cancer Association, Honorary fellow of American Surgical Association, Honorary member of European Surgical Association, Honorary International Fellow of Japanese Society of Endoscopic Surgery and a member of Korea Korean Academy of Science and Technology (KAST). He served as editor or editorial member of ‘Gastric Cancer’ (the official journal of IGCA), Asian Journal of Endoscopic Surgery, Annals of Surgery etc. Professor Yang gave over 380 invited lectures to international meetings and overseas institutes with occasional live demonstrations of gastrectomy (open, laparoscopic or robotic).