I was born in 1965 in Andong, Gyeongsangbuk-do, Korea, as the youngest of three daughters. When my father, who used to work for the Office of Monopoly, found a new job on an oil tanker, our family moved to Busan. When I was an elementary student, I transferred to a school in Seoul. I graduated from Sadang Elementary School, Sangdo Girls’ Middle School, and Chungshin Girls’ High School, and then I entered College of Humanities at Seoul National University(SNU). In my sophomore year, I chose to major in Korean Language and Literature. I continued on to graduate school at SNU and received my M.A. with a thesis on “A Study on Art Methodology of the 1930s”. I made my literary debut in 1996 with the novel, Niche of Green, for which I was awarded the Sangsang Literature Award, but for several different reasons remained unprolific for many years, during which time I completed my doctoral coursework in Korean Literature at Inha University. In 2004, eight years after my first publication, I published Maiden’s Skirt, a collection of short stories, which marked a new beginning for me as a writer. In 2007, I published my second story collection, The Days of Pink Ribbon, and received the Oh Yeong-su Literature Award for one of the stories in the book titled “While the Beans Are Boiling.” Earlier this year, quite unexpectedly, I was honored with the Yi Sang Literary Prize for my story, “To Believe in Love.”
