Born in Busan in 1985, Kim Tongsik dropped out of middle school and worked manual jobs such as printing, cutting, and tiling. While working at a foundry with his uncle, he took to reading at night after work. Searching for "how to write" on the internet, Kim found an article giving the advice to write simple sentences, using ellipses and conjunctions sparingly. The story he knocked up following the article's guidelines quickly gained traction on the internet, and Kim began posting new stories regularly, about every three days, relying on the comments to improve his grammar and writing style.