She received an MA in East Asian Studies from Stanford University and has translated a number of prominent Korean writers, including Hwang Sok-yong, Pyun Hye-young, and Jeon Sungtae.
[1] Her translations have appeared in outlets such as The New Yorker and Harper's Magazine.
[2] Among other accolades, her translation of Hwang Sok-young's At Dusk (해질무렵) was longlisted for the 2019 International Booker Prize.
[5] She is a member of the translation collective Smoking Tigers, whose name is derived from the stock phrase of Korean folktales 호랑이 담배 피우던 시절에 (Long, long ago, back when tigers used to smoke tobacco), for Korean-to-English translators, which includes authors and translators such as Sung Ryu, Stella Kim, Soje, and Deborah Smith.
[6] Kim-Russell has often commented on challenges in Korean translation, namely of certain untranslatable words and concepts in Korea, such as han, dapdaphada (a physical sensation of suffocation caused by feeling frustrated or unable to speak or act freely), and eogulhada (to feel that something is unfair or undeserved), and a perception of 'vagueness' in Korean writing because of the relatively sparse nature of Korean compared to English as a topic-prominent language with minimal pronouns.