Hur, a Korean citizen, was born in Stockholm on 7 April 1981.[5] 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.[2] He manages the literary translation group Smoking Tigers.[6]
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.[7] His writing has been published in outlets such as Astra Magazine, Words Without Borders, Lithub, Asymptote, and many others.[8][9][10] In 2022, he was a recipient of the 13th Yumin Award, an award created in honour of the founder of the newspaper JoongAng Ilbo, that honours "Koreans who made crucial contributions to society, science and technology, as well as culture and arts".[11]
Hur is openly queer and has written about sexuality, the history of diverse sexuality in Korean literature beginning with Yi Kwang-su's 1909 short story Is It Love, and misery as an enduring theme in queer Korean literature.[12] He and his husband divide their time between Seoul and Songdo in Incheon.[13] Hur uses he/they pronouns.[14]
