Often called Nelson Mandela of Asia, Kim Dae-jung (1924 - 2009) was the eighth President of South Korea (1998-2003) and was awarded the 2000 Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of his role in the advancement of peace and human rights in the Korean Peninsula and around the world.

Seung-hee Jeon is one of the leading contemporary translators of Korean literature as well as a literary scholar and critic. Her translations include the 2016 Man Booker Prize-winning novelist Han Kang's Convalescence (2013) and Bang Hyeon-seok's novel, Time to Eat Lobster (2016), which was selected for "75 Notable Translations of the Year" by World Literature Today. She has been honored with a Fulbright Grant, a Korea Foundation Fellowship, and two Daesan Foundation Translation grants (2011 and 2016). She is a lecturer at Boston College in Cambridge, Massachusetts.