Born in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province in 1973, she graduated from the Department of Philosophy at Cheongju University and the Department of Creative Writing at Seoul Institute of the Arts. In 1999, she debuted after her short story "House Made of Lego" won the Dong-A Ilbo New Spring Literary Contest. Her short story "Coat with Thirty-Three Buttons" and the 2001 story "Stairs" were consecutively featured in The Year’s Best Novels 2001 Selected by Field Critics. "The Hat" was included in the 2001 Contemporary Literature Award Winning Collection, and "Shadows" was included in the 2001 Yi Sang Literary Award Winning Collection.

She won the Contemporary Literature Award for "Burying a Treasure Map at the U-turn Point." She won the 11th Hwang Sun-won Literary Award in 2011 for "Boomerang." In addition, she has received the Isu Literary Award, the Lee Hyo-seok Literary Award, the Today's Young Artist Award, the Hankook Ilbo Literary Award, and the Grand Prize of the Kim Seung-ok Literary Award.

Her short story collections include House Made of Lego, Are You There?, Cold, While Laughing, Resting on a Pillow, and Every Day is April Fool's Day. Her novellas and novels include the novella The First Sentence, the novels The Spectators and The Gentle Person, and the novella The First Sentence, among others.