Jeong Yi-hyeon (born 1972) is a

South Korea South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and sharing a Korean Demilitarized Zone, land border with North Korea. Its western border is formed ...

novelist A novelist is an author or writer of novels, though often novelists also write in other genres of both fiction and non-fiction. Some novelists are professional novelists, thus make a living writing novels and other fiction, while others aspire to ...

Life

Jeong Yi-hyeon was born in

Seoul Seoul (; ; ), officially known as the Seoul Special City, is the capital and largest metropolis of South Korea.Before 1972, Seoul was the ''de jure'' capital of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) as stated iArticle 103 ...

in 1972. She graduated from

Sungshin Women's University Sungshin Women's University (Korean: 성신여자대학교) is a private women's university located in Seoul, South Korea. It was founded in 1936 by Dr. Sook-Chong Lee. During the 1960s and 70s, Sungshin was a Teachers College in South Korea. Th ...

Graduate School, and studied in the Department of Creative Writing at

Seoul Institute of the Arts Seoul Institute of the Arts is a prominent educational institution specializing in the Arts located in Ansan, Gyeonggi Province, South Korea. The school has nurtured many graduates who are actively working in art related fields within Korea as w ...

Career

Jeong Yi-hyeon began her literary career in 2001. In 2002, she received the New Writer's Award by Moonji. Soon thereafter, her short story ''The Loneliness of Others'' (타인의 고독) received the Lee Hyo-seok Literary Award, and ''Sampoong Department Store'' (삼풍백화점) received the Modern Literary Award. Jeong Yi-hyeon is also an innovator in the field of Internet serialization in Korea, having written her second novel ''You Do Not Know'', on the Kyobo Book Center blog. Initial posting of chapters resulted in 400,000 visitors to the serial.

Works

In opposition to the Korean literary tradition of focusing on the marginalised and dispossessed, Jeong Yi-hyeon depicts the dating, marriage, career lives, desires and conflicts of urban women. Her works are frequently set in the wealthy

neighborhood of Gangnam. She is known to describe those things in a sharp and cheerful way. ''My Sweet City'' (달콤한 나의도시) is considered to be the beginning of her fame. It is regarded as the origin of representative South Korean

chick lit Chick lit is a term used to describe a type of popular fiction targeted at younger women. Widely used in the 1990s and 2000s, the term has fallen out of fashion with publishers while writers and critics have rejected its inherent sexism. Novels id ...

. After ''My Sweet City'' was published, it ignited a chick lit craze in Korea. ''My Sweet City'' is considered to describe accurately women in their 30s. It was made into a

Korean drama Korean dramas (; RR: ''Han-guk deurama''), more popularly known as K-dramas, are television series in the Korean language, made in South Korea. They are popular worldwide, especially in Asia, partially due to the spread of Korean popular cultu ...

, and aroused sympathy from women in their 20s and 30s. LIST Magazine summarizes her work: :Jung chooses to handle this reality through a “politics of masquerade” in the Baudrillardian sense. Jung’s characters happen to be young women with office jobs who are blatantly well-adjusted to the system. They are vicious and not ashamed of their desires to climb the socioeconomic ladder. In “Romantic Love and Society,” marriage is a means of moving up to higher social classes. In “Trunk,” fashion and cars are status symbols. The women are so conniving and sly that they are subject to ridicule in the end, which is Jung’s point. By portraying individuals who have become perfect embodiments of consumer capitalism, Jung reveals the phoniness of these individuals and the situation that surrounds them. Jung thus explores ways for literature to remain political in an age where politics to have lost its relevance.

Awards

* Literature and Society New Author Award (2002) * Yi Hyo-seok Literary Award (2004) * Hyundae Literary Award (2006)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Jeong, Yi-hyeon Living people 1972 births Sungshin Women's University alumni Seoul Institute of the Arts alumni South Korean novelists South Korean women novelists South Korean women writers