[3] Choe was born in Ulju County, Ulsan in southern South Korea.

[4] Choe began his journalism career as a political reporter at The Korea Herald, an English-language daily.

He joined the Associated Press's Seoul Bureau in 1994 and covered natural disasters, North Korea and 1997 Asian financial crisis.

[5] The series of investigative reports they produced on the No Gun Ri Massacre and similar incidents during the Korean War, published between September and December 1999, helped trigger broader private and government-sponsored investigations of wartime atrocities.

[7] In 2018, Choe was a member of the team of New York Times reporters who won the Overseas Press Club's Bob Considine Award for best newspaper, news service or digital interpretation of international affairs for its coverage of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal.