Paek graduated from the College of Pharmacy at Seoul National University and received his Ph.D in 2007 from his alma mater's graduate school for his research on the chemical synthesis of bioactive natural products. He then worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Southwestern Medical School in Dallas, Texas in the U.S., and has been a professor at the College of Pharmacy at Gyeongsang National University since 2011. His main research interests include the efficient synthesis of natural products and pharmaceuticals. He has published a synthetic method for the treatment of Huntington's disease and is currently developing drugs for neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's. Paek is also the author of War and Drugs, a History of a Love-Hate Relationship and Molecular Sculptors.