Sok-jung moved to North Korea with his family after the Second World War.
He served in the Korean People's Navy, and obtained a degree in literature at Kim Il Sung University.
In 1979, he joined the Central Committee of North Korea's official literary organisation, the Joseon Writers' Alliance(Now under Korean Federation of Literature and Arts).
In 2002, he published Hwang Jin-i (Korean: 황진이), a historical novel set in the sixteenth century, which depicts courtesan Hwang Jin-i's discovery of the people's starvation and encounters with corrupt officials.
An excerpt from the novel was translated into English and published by Words Without Borders (WWB) in Literature from the "Axis of Evil" in 2006.