After industrialization and urbanization began in earnest in the 1960s, Korean literature frequently dealt with the subject of young people who turned their backs on their hometowns to come to Seoul.

However, though young people continued to move to the capital after the new millennium, literary interest in their stories began to decrease.

[2] She originally studied playwriting in college, and perhaps for that reason her stories reveal an unusual interest in small, run-down spaces.

[2] Her 2011 novel My Brilliant Life is a touching story of a 17-year-old boy with progeria, a disease that cause rapid aging; he prepares to bid farewell to his thirty-something parents, who had him when they were teenagers.

[3][4] It was a bestseller, and in 2014 was adapted into the E J-yong film My Brilliant Life starring Kang Dong-won and Song Hye-kyo.