in 2023 Hur, a Korean citizen, was born in
Stockholm on 7 April 1981. His father worked for
KOTRA, a state-funded trade and investment promotion organization of the South Korean government, and he was raised in various countries including Hong Kong, Ethiopia, and Thailand before settling in Korea. As his family did not initially support him studying literature, he studied law and psychology at
Korea University and French at
Korea National Open University before pursuing a master's degree in English literature at
Seoul National University. He began working as a translator full-time in 2018, beginning with Kyung-Sook Shin's
The Court Dancer. In addition to translating Korean literature into English, Hur is also the translator of the forthcoming Korean edition of
Ocean Vuong's
Night Sky with Exit Wounds. His writing has been published in outlets such as
Astra Magazine,
Words Without Borders,
Lithub,
Asymptote, and many others. In 2022, he was a recipient of the 13th
Hong Jin-Ki Creator Award, created in honour of the founder of the newspaper
JoongAng Ilbo, which honours "Koreans who made crucial contributions to society, science and technology, as well as culture and arts". Hur's first novel,
Toward Eternity, was published in 2024. In 2025, Hur was on the judging panel for the International Booker Prize. His translation of Seolyeon Park's
Capitalists Must Starve released in October 2025. Hur is openly
queer and has written about sexuality, the history of diverse sexuality in Korean literature beginning with
Yi Gwangsu's 1909 short story
Is It Love, and misery as an enduring theme in queer Korean literature
. He and his husband divide their time between Seoul and
Songdo in
Incheon. == Selected translations ==