Hong is a Paris-based author of three books. The novel
Kept: A Comedy of Sex and Manners was published by Simon and Schuster in 2006.
The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture was published by Picador Books in the US/Simon & Schuster in the UK in 2014, and has been published in seven languages. It was named an Amazon Editor's Pick. Her third book,
The Power of Nunchi: The Korean Secret to Success and Happiness, was published by
Penguin Random House in 2019. Her books have been translated into 18 languages, including French, Dutch, Spanish, Polish, Italian, German, Portuguese (standard and Brazilian), Indonesian, Thai, and Chinese. Hong was a senior columnist for the U.S. edition of the
Financial Times, where she wrote a weekly television column and other articles on culture. She was awarded a Fulbright Beginning Professional Journalism Award. Hong's works have appeared in
The New York Times,
The Wall Street Journal,
The Washington Post,
The New Republic,
The Daily Beast,
The Atlantic, and elsewhere. Hong was born in
New Jersey in the
United States. At age 12, she moved to
Seoul with her family, and was educated in both the
Korean public school system and an international school (
Seoul Foreign School). While studying in Korea, she experienced
anti-communist indoctrination. She is fluent in English, Korean, French, and German. Hong is a convert to
Judaism. ==Selected works==