Kim Byeong-eun was born in 1951 in Daegu, South Korea, and studied linguistics in Seoul National University. After graduation he bounced around from job to job, working at each company for only a year or two, before finally embarking on a career as a writer in his early forties. He made his literary debut with the story “Gleaning,” published by the magazine Literature and Society in 1992. The story is about a man who goes to North Korea during the Korean War, where he is trained as a spy. After being sent on a mission to South Korea, he is caught and imprisoned, before finally being “converted” to democracy.
