My first full-length novel, 『There is an Error』, is a procedural cyberpunk. ‘Cyberpunk’ is a subgenre of SF that depicts a future society where various technologies have advanced but the quality of life has been rather deteriorated, and I wanted to tell a small sweet and charming story about it. The most recent long novel, 『Smuggling: Least Concern』 is an ecological thriller set in the international wild life smuggling market where many characters are engaged in life or death struggle with each other in cat-and-mouse situations. Other works include a collection of short stories, 『Proven Facts』, and the title piece of this collection won the runnerup prize for medium to short stories at the SF Awards in 2018. You will like other pieces in that collection.

I have not particularly thought about having consistency in my works. At least for now, I am consistently trying to write about something new, something I have not dealt with so far. Even so, if there is a message that I always wish to put in my work, it would be some kind of comfort for readers. I often want to tell them that there are endlessly diverse forms of life in the world and there are no inherently wrong paths regardless of which path they are on, so they can leave the door open andli ve freely as much as they want.

I don’t know. I can't remember it specifically, but I think I liked the educational direction of GIST in that they did not neglect humanities and liberal arts. I wanted to learn chemistry, but at the same time, I was also serious about writing. Considering that, sending the application to GIST in my final year of high school was the most appropriate choice I made.

I have been interested in creative activities since I was very young. I was a student who scribbled on a notebook with a pencil whenever I had chance. I specifically thought about becoming a ‘writer’ after I saw a friend of mine from middle school showing an earnest passion for writing. That was the first time I thought ‘continuing to write can be a long-term goal.’

I was going to continue to write however my life as a science student would turn out. Then, I won a small contest near the end of my undergraduate course and that was my first official achievement as a writer. I think the future began to seem a little more clear. I continued writing and research for a while, but I decided to continue to do the one that I could do better.

When a person who likes science writes a novel, it naturally becomes SF. The genre, SF, was a natural consequence for me rather than a choice. Looking back, my writings have always been within the boundary of SF even when I was not aware that I was writing SF.

I always have pressure and difficulties! Recently my daily concern has been a repeated self-question of "Why did I decided to write to go through all these troubles?" It will continue until I somehow squeeze a successful outcome out of my head. Writing and research sometimes have odd resemblances.

I was not a very sincere student. I remember one day when linear algebra was so hard that I almost stopped studying it. I did my best for my favorite subjects, but even on those days, I was continuously thinking, ‘Can I use the new stuff I learned as material for a novel?’ in the back of my mind. Come to think of it, I was certainly a sincere student on the one hand. GIST’s undergraduate course has a lot of humanities lectures that became quite helpful to me as a writer. I could take specialized literature classes along with my major subject, and what I learned at the time is still one of the main groundworks of my creation.

I majored in chemistry, and I had a lot of help from Professor Jiwon Seo. I was not a very good student in my major class, but I used to put a lot of effort into occasional essay assignments. Professor Seo gave them high scores, and that was a great encouragement for me. On the othe rhand, I owe Professor Siyeon Lee a great dea l for my work as a writer. It is no exaggeration to say that the experience of taking English literature classes almost every semester has enabled my writing today. From literary theory to new perspectives on science and technology, and understanding gender issues, I was able to learn quite a bit of essential knowledge for continuing my creation as a SF writer in the 21st century.

Studying science and technology to become a science and technology professional is surely a great thing, but the goal in life is not determined by which college and which department you go to when you are in the final year of high school. I had the impression that GIST tries to provide students with experiences as wide as possible outside the boundary of science and technology from humanities to arts while being faithful to its role as an institute of science and technology. That's a huge strength of GIST, and I think it helped me as a student at GIST a lot before I became a writer.

Not every science student can become a successful science and technology professional. Learning science does not put you on the path of a typical life as a science and technology professional. There are many paths. I hope the students take a moment to think about how they can make what they want to do into one of those many paths.

Since you gave me the opportunity, I should take it for promotion. Read Korean SF! Korean science fiction has made a number of great achievements recently, and there are plenty of great works. More works will definitely be published in the future. This is the best time to start reading Korean science fiction. Don't miss the chance to take a glimpse at the new world!”