The year she turned 26, she graduated from Ewha Womans University with a degree in educational technology and went to the California Institute of the Arts to study character animation. In 2004, the year she turned 33, she published her first picture book, Cloud Bread.
In 2005, she was named Illustrator of the Year at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair for Cloud Bread. In 2007, she published The Pink Rope and The Boy Who Looked for the North Wind.
In 2010, she started the one-person press Story Bowl and published Moon Sherbet, six years after Cloud Bread. That September a Cloud Bread animation began on KBS 1TV. In 2011, she published Last Evening. In 2012, she won the 53rd Korea Publishing Culture Awards for The Bath Fairy. In 2013, she won the 3rd Changwon Children’s Literature Award for the same book.
In summer 2014, reports on the gap between Cloud Bread’s sales and the royalties she received made her buyout contract a controversy. In 2015, she sued the photographer who worked on Cloud Bread, asking the court to declare that the photographer held no copyright. In 2016, a court ruled that Baek was the author of those photographs, and Strange Mother came out the same year.
In 2017, she published Magic Candies. In 2018, the Japanese edition of Magic Candies won the 11th MOE Picture Book Bookstore Award. In 2019, she published I Am a Dog, and the Japanese edition of Magic Candies also won at the 24th Japan Picture Book Awards.
The breakthrough yearOn March 31, 2020, the year she turned 49, she was named winner of the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, the first Korean author to win it. Three months later her Cloud Bread copyright lawsuit ended with a final loss at the Supreme Court.
In 2021, the ceremony that had been postponed was held at the Swedish ambassador’s residence in Seoul. In 2022, she published Yeoni and Mr. Willow and won a Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor for the English edition of Moon Sherbet. In 2023, she held her first solo exhibition at the Seoul Arts Center and reopened Story Bowl at the end of the year.
In 2024, she published The Recipe of Magic Candies. In 2025, the animation based on Magic Candies reached the final five for an Academy Award, and it opened in Korea in May. In 2026, she published a new book, Gumeongcheong.
Baek Hee-na (born Dec 1, 1971) debuted in 2004, the year she turned 33, with her first picture book, Cloud Bread, and became known on Mar 31, 2020, the year she turned 49, when she became the first Korean author to win the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award. Her Cloud Bread copyright lawsuit ended with a final loss in 2020.
Ages are by calendar year (the year minus the birth year), birthdays aside.
After graduating from Ewha Womans University with a degree in educational technology, she went to the U.S. in 1997 and studied character animation at the California Institute of the Arts.
Source 02 · Chosun Ilbo (Korean) · Lindgren Award interview · opens in a new tabSource 01 · Hankyung (Korean) · Lindgren Award win · opens in a new tabThe story follows a pair of cat siblings who eat bread made from cloud dough on a rainy day, float into the sky and bring bread to their father, who went to work without breakfast. About 450,000 copies had sold by 2020.
Source 01 · Hankyung (Korean) · Lindgren Award win · opens in a new tabSource 02 · Chosun Ilbo (Korean) · Lindgren Award interview · opens in a new tabSource 37 · Newsis (Korean) · First picture book solo exhibition announced · opens in a new tab One article gives the year of publication as 2003 (Newsis, 2023). The month was not confirmed.The Chosun Ilbo describes the selection as Illustrator of the Year, and Yonhap as Author of the Year in the fiction category. Yonhap says the selection made her name known.
Source 02 · Chosun Ilbo (Korean) · Lindgren Award interview · opens in a new tabSource 04 · Yonhap News Agency (Korean) · New children’s books: I Am a Dog · opens in a new tab The date of the selection was not confirmed.Later articles list the two books together among her representative works.
Source 34 · Wikipedia (Korean) · Baek Hee-na · opens in a new tabSource 02 · Chosun Ilbo (Korean) · Lindgren Award interview · opens in a new tab The year of publication is from Wikipedia; not confirmed in news reports.It came six years after Cloud Bread. She says she could not create for a while, then started her own publisher, and Moon Sherbet was the first book she brought out.
Source 05 · Newsis (Korean) · Moon Sherbet published · opens in a new tabSource 06 · Yonhap News Agency (Korean) · Boston Globe-Horn Book interview · opens in a new tabThe 3D animation, made in Chuncheon by the Gangwon Information & Culture Promotion Agency, aired Saturdays at 1 p.m. for 26 weeks until February the next year.
Source 07 · Yonhap News Agency (Korean) · Chuncheon-made Cloud Bread animation · opens in a new tabSource 08 · Hankyung (Korean) · Cloud Bread animation and musical · opens in a new tab Yonhap gives the run as 26 weeks and Hankyung as 78 episodes in total.Her earlier Moon Sherbet had sold more than 36,000 copies in about five months.
Source 09 · Yonhap News Agency (Korean) · Last Evening interview · opens in a new tab The publication date was not confirmed. Yonhap introduced it as a new book on Jan. 16.Published by Bear Books. It is the story of meeting a fairy at an old bathhouse.
Source 10 · Hankook Ilbo (Korean) · 53rd Korea Publishing Culture Awards · opens in a new tab The month of publication was not confirmed.She says that with learning comics dominating the market she had lost much of her energy, and the prize was a great encouragement.
Source 10 · Hankook Ilbo (Korean) · 53rd Korea Publishing Culture Awards · opens in a new tab The date is the day Hankook Ilbo reported the winners. One article gives the number of the awards as the 52nd.Changwon city said on this day that it had chosen The Bath Fairy for the award.
Source 11 · Yonhap News Agency (Korean) · 3rd Changwon Children’s Literature Award · opens in a new tabYonhap wrote that the book came out one year and seven months before her next work, Strange Mother.
Source 16 · Yonhap News Agency (Korean) · Strange Mother published · opens in a new tab The publication date was not confirmed. The entry follows a 2016 Yonhap article that says it came out in July of the year before last.Herald Business reported that while Cloud Bread brought in 440 billion won in sales, she received only 18.5 million won in royalties because of a buyout contract signed early in her career. A buyout contract is one in which a publisher pays a fixed sum and keeps all later revenue.
Source 12 · Herald Business (Korean) · Cloud Bread buyout contract · opens in a new tabSource 13 · Seoul Shinmun (Korean) · Hansol Soobook buyout contract · opens in a new tabShe sued Kim Hyang-su, who did the photography for Cloud Bread, asking the court to declare that Kim held no copyright, and the first hearing was set for Sept. 3. Baek argued that the other side had played only a supporting role, while Kim countered that the work combined three-dimensional objects and photographs.
Source 14 · Munhwa Ilbo (Korean) · Suit for a declaration of no copyright · opens in a new tabSeoul Western District Court Civil Division 11 ruled that Baek was the author of the 36 photographs in Cloud Bread and that the Hansol Education employee who handled the main shoot could not be regarded as a co-author.
Source 15 · Nocut News (Korean) · Recognized as sole author · opens in a new tabIt was her first new book in a year and seven months. It sold 27,000 copies in seven weeks.
Source 16 · Yonhap News Agency (Korean) · Strange Mother published · opens in a new tabSource 17 · Dong-A Ilbo (Korean) · Strange Mother interview · opens in a new tabPublished by Bear Books at 48 pages, it is the story of Dong-dong, a child who eats candies that make inner voices audible. She says she began it because she felt a great wave of gloom coming on after Strange Mother came out.
Source 18 · Babynews (Korean) · Magic Candies new book · opens in a new tabSource 19 · Hankyoreh (Korean) · Magic Candies interview · opens in a new tabThe award is decided by a vote of 3,000 bookstore staff across Japan. In 2017 Magic Candies had already been named to the IBBY Honour List.
Source 04 · Yonhap News Agency (Korean) · New children’s books: I Am a Dog · opens in a new tabSource 20 · The Kyunghyang Shinmun (Korean) · I Am a Dog interview · opens in a new tab The date of the award was not confirmed. The Kyunghyang Shinmun gives it as late 2018.Told in the voice of an old dog, Guseul, it is a prequel to Magic Candies. The same year the Japanese edition of Magic Candies won both the translated picture book prize and the readers’ prize at the 24th Japan Picture Book Awards.
Source 04 · Yonhap News Agency (Korean) · New children’s books: I Am a Dog · opens in a new tabSource 20 · The Kyunghyang Shinmun (Korean) · I Am a Dog interview · opens in a new tab The date of the Japan Picture Book Awards was not confirmed. Yonhap says only this year in a 2019 article, and the Kyunghyang Shinmun says only recently.The award was announced by online livestream from the Lindgren family home in Stockholm. There were 240 nominees from 67 countries, and the prize money is 5 million kronor.
Supreme Court Civil Division 3 dismissed her appeal, without a full hearing, in the suit against Hansol Education, Hansol Soobook, the Gangwon Information & Culture Promotion Agency and DPS. She had also lost at the first and second instances.
Source 21 · Seoul Shinmun (Korean) · Final loss at the Supreme Court · opens in a new tabShe talked about the Cloud Bread contract and the course of the lawsuit.
Source 22 · Xports News (Korean) · Appearance on You Quiz on the Block · opens in a new tabThe ceremony, which had been due to take place in Sweden, was held in Seoul. She attended in a hanbok in blue and yellow, the colors of the Swedish flag.
Source 23 · Seoul Shinmun (Korean) · Lindgren Award ceremony · opens in a new tabHer first new book in three years since I Am a Dog, it is a picture book retelling a folktale.
Source 24 · Newsis (Korean) · Yeoni and Mr. Willow · opens in a new tabSource 25 · Yonhap News Agency (Korean) · New children’s books: Yeoni and Mr. Willow · opens in a new tab One article gives the publication year as 2021 (Financial News, 2023).Boston Globe Media announced it on the 22nd, local time. The English edition is titled Moon Pops and was named an Honor Book in the picture book category.
Source 26 · Yonhap News Agency (Korean) · Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor · opens in a new tabHeld at the Hangaram Design Museum until Oct. 8 as a special exhibition for the center’s 30th anniversary, it presented characters and scenes from 11 picture books in 140 works.
Source 27 · Financial News (Korean) · Baek Hee-na picture book exhibition opens · opens in a new tabSource 36 · News1 (Korean) · First solo exhibition · opens in a new tabShe reopened, under the same name, Story Bowl, which had published Moon Sherbet and then closed.
Source 28 · Munhwa Ilbo (Korean) · Story Bowl reopens · opens in a new tab The entry follows a Munhwa Ilbo article of November 2024 that says last December. The date was not confirmed.It is the first new book since Story Bowl reopened and a spin-off of Magic Candies. A revised edition of Magic Candies came out at the same time.
Source 29 · Yonhap News Agency (Korean) · The Recipe of Magic Candies published · opens in a new tabThe distributor M-Line Distribution announced on this day that the film was among the five final nominees. The running time is 20 minutes 43 seconds.
Source 30 · Financial News (Korean) · Academy Award shortlist · opens in a new tab The date is the day the Korean distributor announced it.At the ceremony at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, on March 3 Korean time, the award went to In the Shadow of the Cypress, directed by Hossein Molayemi.
Source 31 · Ilgan Sports (Korean) · No Oscar win · opens in a new tabToei Animation and Dandelion Animation Studio made it from Magic Candies and I Am a Dog, and Daisuke Nishio directed.
Source 32 · MBC Entertainment (Korean) · Magic Candies animation opens · opens in a new tabPublished by Story Bowl. Two days after going on sale it ranked No. 11 overall and No. 1 in the infant category on Yes24.
Source 33 · Edaily (Korean) · Gumeongcheong bestseller · opens in a new tabSource 35 · Hankyoreh (Korean) · Gumeongcheong review · opens in a new tabEND OF SELECTED RECORDSSelected records, 1997–2026 · not a complete list of work. “Key moment” is an editorial label, not a measure of success.
What did they do, and at what age?
AgeTrail lines up the key moments of a life by age.
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Books · South Korea
Dec 1, 1971 —
Ages are counted from the birth year 1971: the year of the event minus 1971, birthdays aside. “Key moment” labels and the connecting story are AgeTrail's editorial reading.
Fact-checked: 2026.09.22 · An independent archive, not affiliated with the person or their agency.