He was born in Gimcheon, Gyeongbuk, and graduated from Sungkyunkwan University. In 1993, he published a poem in the summer issue of Writer’s World, and in 1994, he won the 3rd Writer’s World Literature Award for his novel Walking While Pointing at the Mask. He won the Dongseo Literature Award in 2001 for his novel Goodbye, Yi Sang, the Dongin Literature Award in 2003 for his novel When I Was Still A Child, the Daesan Literature Award in 2005 for his novel I am a Ghost Writer, the Hwang Sun-won Literature Award in 2007 for his short story “The Comedian Who Went to the Moon”, and the Sang Sang Literature Award in 2009 for his short story “Five Pleasures for Those Who Take Walks”. He is the author of the novels Route 7, So You Love Me, Seonnyeong, Whoever You Are, No Matter How Lonely, The Night Sings, Wonder Boy, If the Waves Belong to the Sea, the novellas *Twenty Years Old, World’s End Girlfriend, Mi in April, Sol in July, and the prose collection Sentences of a Springtime, The Right to Travel, The Moments We Shared, Saying that I Won’t Lose, The Work of a Novelist, The Diary of a Time, A Spontaneous Happy-ending (co-author).