Born in 1931 in Gaepung, Gyeonggi Province, Park Wan-suh lost her father at the age of three and moved to Seoul when she was seven. She attended Sookmyung Girls’ High School and later entered the Department of Korean Language and Literature at Seoul National University, but had to suspend her studies when the Korean War broke out.

In 1970, at the age of forty, she made her literary debut when her novel The Naked Tree (Namok) won the grand prize in the long-form fiction contest hosted by Yeoseong Dong-A. Afterward, she continued to write prolifically—producing both fiction and essays—well into her eighties.