kim's stories feature young people in their 20s who have moved up to seoul from other parts of the country. after industrialization and urbanization began in earnest in the 1960s, korean literature frequently dealt with the subject of young people who turned their backs on their hometowns to come to seoul. however, though young people continued to move to the capital after the new millennium, literary interest in their stories began to decrease. because kim spent most of her childhood growing up in a rural village called seosan and only began living in seoul in her 20s, she imbues the lives of the characters in her stories with a strong sense of realism.