Ever since publishing her first picture book, Hide and Seek, in 2004, Oh Seungmin has been making children’s books. She is the author of Alice’s Strange Hair Salon, Tonkatsu Curry Ricefor Today, and Red Shoes, and has illustrated Space Hotel, My Doksan-dong, I Am An Jung-geun, Rules of the Prairie, Life is Travel, Dear Chair, and many other children’s books.

While writing Jeom-ok’i, the author realized that her own grandmother fled Suncheon for Juam in October 1948 to escape the massacre. Oh authored Jeom-ok’i thinking of someone who can’t but miss their lost family forever.