Jongkuen was born and raised in Seoul, South Korea and did a Ph.D. at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York. After a short postdoc experience in Germany, he came back to New York to study clonal precursor cells (CPCs) proposed to drive Follicular Lymphoma (FL) in the Melnick lab.

Apart from science, Jongkuen likes traveling the world and grabbing a beer with friends.