Therese Park came to the U.S. in October of 1966 to perform with the Kansas City Philharmonic (now the Kansas City Symphony) in its cello section. After 30 years, she retired and began writing full time. Her first novel A Gift of the Emperor (published by Spinsters Ink, 1997) deals with Korean sex slaves, mostly schoolgirls, including Soon-ah, the heroin of her novel, forced into military prostitution by the Japanese military during WWII while Japan ruled most of Asia and the Pacific.
In 2006, Park wrote Midwest Voices columns for The Kansas City Star-Opinion Page, and between 2009 and 2016, she wrote columns for the Star-Johnson County Neighborhood News.
Returned and Reborn: A Tale of a Korean Orphan Boy, published by Austin Macauley, was released on March 29th, 2019.