I was born in Seoul, Korea. In the mid-1970s, my mother, my older sister and I emigrated to the United States, where we lived in the northwest side of Chicago. I completed my undergraduate (B.A. Hons., 1994, Theology and Philosophy) at Loyola University, Chicago with the assistance of a Presidential scholarship and a Pell Grant. After working in Centralized Services in the Cash Management division of First Chicago Bank, I decided to return to school and enrolled at the University of Notre Dame to complete a M.A., Concentration in Biblical Languages degree in the Department of Theology. I arrived at Notre Dame when they had the ‘old stadium’ with the brownish red brick facade. I was a M.A. student when I went to Israel for the first time in 1996 to participate in the archaeological excavation at Banias (Caesarea Philippi), a Roman period site at the base of Mt. Hermon that was being excavated by Vasilios Tsaferis.

During this time I went to Israel to study with Emanuel Tov at Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel, with funding from a Fulbright Fellowship in 1997-1998, an exciting year that coincided with the fiftieth anniversary of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. I returned to Notre Dame to begin Ph.D. studies in the Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity area, with a minor in Syriac exegesis and Liturgical Studies. I wrote my dissertation on the Thanksgiving Hymns (Hebr. Hodayot) from Qumran under James C. VanderKam, finishing in 2003 with a Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame.