Min Jin Lee

Min Jin Lee is a Korean American novelist, born in Seoul in 1968. Her family emigrated to the United States when she was seven and settled in Queens, New York.

She studied history at Yale and law at Georgetown, and worked as a corporate lawyer in New York before ill health led her to leave the profession and write full time. Her first novel, Free Food for Millionaires, appeared in 2007.

Her second, Pachinko, traces a Korean family across generations after they migrate to Japan; it was a finalist for the National Book Award and was adapted as an Apple TV+ series. Her third novel, American Hagwon, was published in September 2026.