She received her B.A. in English and International Relations from Handong University (South Korea) and Ph.D. in English from the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities. She specializes in transnational Korean literature, Asian American literature, the history and theory of the novel, and Critical Asian studies. Her latest research examines how the figure of the North Korean refugee is imagined in South Korean and North American cultural and political representations. Her works are forthcoming in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Asian American Literature and Culture, Imperial Coordinates: Militarization and Asian Americanist Critique (Rutgers University Press), and Journal of Asian American Studies.