Her novels portray not so much the fate of people embroiled in some kind of conflict as their psychological state when they contemplate a situation or idea.
She focuses on recording spontaneous thoughts or flashbacks, rather than on describing something accurately or developing a dramatic arc.
In this absence of a clear plot, the reading experience consists mostly of following the author's thought process.
This is why Han's work can be considered an example of the French nouveau roman or antinovel.
In her final year of high school, she submitted three or four applications to undergraduate programs, including Russian literature, that she supposed would allow her to read as much as possible.
She read extensively, as she had expected, and her university life remained largely uneventful until she took an elective course in creative writing offered by the Korean literature department at her school.
Without harboring literary ambitions anywhere as strong as the creative writing majors in her class, she wrote a short story entitled "Dalo" (달로 To the Moon) for her final project.
She is a member of Ru, an experimental writers' association, and is the founder of the publisher Oulipopress.
She was briefly a member of the band The Chop, along with poets Kiwan Sung and Hwang Byungsng.
In an interview at the 2016 Seoul International Writers' Festival, Han stated that her involvement with the band was so long ago she barely remembered it, and that she only participated in two shows.
[3][4] In 2008 and 2012, she was funded by LTI Korea to partake in the Overseas Residency Program for Korean Writers in New York City and Provence, respectively.
Unlike some writers who receive critical and popular acclaim due to their exceptional narrative or character development, Han Yujoo intentionally veers away from standard practices in fiction writing and succeeds in creating a unique literary voice.
Her work holds appeal for some readers and critics because she refuses to craft a meticulously structured narrative and does not attempt to produce memorable scenes through characters or events.
The 'first to realize the futility of language,' they are the ones giving today's Korean literature a 'devastating brilliance.
Some critics argue that her language is superfluous, her experiments derivative, and her works closer to miscellanies of essays rather than novels.
It can be argued that Han Yujoo stands on the boundaries of linguistic experimentation that Korean literature is undergoing in the 21st century.
"Black-and-White Photographer", translated by Janet Hong, Asia Literary Review.