Born in Gaepung, Gyeonggi Province, in 1931, Park Wan-suh entered Seoul National University to study Korean literature but was forced to abandon her studies during the Korean War. In 1970, at the age of forty, she won the Women’s Dong-A contest for full-length fiction with her novel The Naked Tree, making her literary debut.

Her many works include Teaching Shame, The Summer of Betrayal, Mother’s Stake, That Winter Was Warm, In Search of Flowers, and The Lost Years. She received numerous literary honors, among them the Korean Writers’ Award (1980), the Yi Sang Literary Award (1981), the Korean Literature Award (1990), the Isang Literary Award (1991), the JoongAng Culture Award (1993), the Hyundai Literary Award (1993), the Dong-in Literary Award (1994), the Han Moo-Sook Literary Award (1995), the Daesan Literary Award (1997), the Manhae Literary Award (1999), the Inchon Prize (2000), the Hwang Sunwon Literary Award (2001), and the Ho-Am Prize (2006). She was awarded an honorary doctorate in literature by Seoul National University in 2006..