[1] Im Chul-woo was born October 15, 1954, on Wando Island in South Jeolla Province.

His debut was The Dog Thief in 1981 [5] In 1985 he was awarded the 17th Korean Creative Writing Prize for The Land of My Father (Abeoji ui ttang) and in 1988 was awarded the 12th Yi Sang Literature Prize for The Red Room (Bulgeun bang), which has since been published in an anthology of the same name.

[7] One year after the Gwangju Uprising Lim published his first short story, Dog Thief, which focused on the national division and violence of Korean ideological conflict.

Most of LIm's writing focuses on the Gwangju Uprising of the Korean War as a setting in which to explore the psychology of guilt.

Lim's work on the Gwangju Uprising culminated in Spring Day, a five-volume novel written over eight years.