Lee Yun-gi (

Hangul The Korean alphabet, known as Hangul, . Hangul may also be written as following South Korea's standard Romanization. ( ) in South Korea and Chosŏn'gŭl in North Korea, is the modern official writing system for the Korean language. The let ...

: 이윤기, May 3, 1947 - August 27, 2010) is a prize-winning modern

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 ...

n writer and translator.

Life

Lee Yun-gi was born in

Gyeongsangbuk-do North Gyeongsang Province ( ko, 경상북도, translit=Gyeongsangbuk-do, ) is a province in eastern South Korea. The province was formed in 1896 from the northern half of the former Gyeongsang province, and remained a province of Korea until the ...

Korea Korea ( ko, 한국, or , ) is a peninsular region in East Asia. Since 1945, it has been divided at or near the 38th parallel, with North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) comprising its northern half and South Korea (Republic o ...

, on May 5, 1947. Although Lee Yun-gi (1947~ ) made his official literary debut in 1977 and published his first collection of short stories, White Helicopter in 1988, it was not until the mid-1990s that he gained recognition as a fiction writer. For the first twenty years of his career, Lee was better known as a prolific translator and by the time his first novel, The Gates of Heaven, appeared in 1994, he had translated and published over 150 works including

Umberto Eco Umberto Eco (5 January 1932 – 19 February 2016) was an Italian medievalist, philosopher, semiotician, novelist, cultural critic, and political and social commentator. In English, he is best known for his popular 1980 novel ''The Name of the ...

’s

The Name of the Rose ''The Name of the Rose'' ( it, Il nome della rosa ) is the 1980 debut novel by Italian author Umberto Eco. It is a historical murder mystery set in an Italian monastery in the year 1327, and an intellectual mystery combining semiotics in fiction, ...

and Foucault’s Pendulum."Lee Yun-gi" LTI Korea Datasheet available at LTI Korea Library or online at: http://klti.or.kr/ke_04_03_011.do#

Work

Lee Yun-gi utilizes his knowledge of

mythology Myth is a folklore genre consisting of narratives that play a fundamental role in a society, such as foundational tales or origin myths. Since "myth" is widely used to imply that a story is not objectively true, the identification of a narrat ...

to build narratives rich in symbols and metaphors. His background in translating, which requires attention to the exact meaning of each word, gives his language precision and accuracy. His writing contains a great deal of dialogue. Although Korean writers tend to focus more on descriptions than dialogues, Lee Yun-gi relies much on dialogues to drive his narrative forward. His dialogues are pithy but meaningful and so dynamic that the readers often imagine themselves listening to a real conversation. In his works, Lee focuses on understanding various forms of life through communication with others and thereby embraces life. Lee’s attitude toward life is marked by a sense of generosity and optimism. He does not complain about life’s cruelties, become frustrated by hardships or despair over the baseness of human nature. Rather than exposing the problems in life, he concentrates on resolving them through his work. Lee often uses aphorisms—old ones reshaped or new ones penned by the author and strategically placed throughout the text—that attempt to express a certain universal truth about life. Another characteristic of Lee’s fiction is humor and wit. The comedy of a given situation is brought to life through the author’s multi-layered style of writing that initially delays understanding and then allows his characters an epiphanic moment later on. Lee draws freely from his knowledge of both eastern and western history, mythologies and culture. In 1998 Lee won the

Dong-in Literature Prize The Dong-in Literary Award ( ko, 동인문학상) is a South Korean literary award named after novelist Kim Dong-in, established in order to praise the literary achievement of The Republic of Korea. In commemoration of the Korean modern literature ...

and in 2008 he won the Daesan Literature Award and the Korean Translation Award.

Works in Korean (Partial)

Short Story Collections * White Helicopter (Hayan hellikopteo) (1977), Seeing One Road, * Seeing Two Roads (Oegil bogi, dugil bogi) * Butterfly Necktie (Nabi nektai) (1995) Novels * Gate to Heaven (Haneurui mun) (1994) * Sunlight and Moonlight (Haetbitgwa dalbit)(1996) * An Offspring of Love (Sarangui jongja) * House Where Trees Pray (Namuga gidohaneun jip)(1999) Essay Collections * School for Adults (Eoreunui hakgyo) * Rainbow and Prism (Mujigaewa peuriseum) Translations *

(Jangmiui ireum) * Foucault’s Pendulum (Pukoui jinja), *

The Island of the Day Before ''The Island of the Day Before'' ( it, L'isola del giorno prima) is a 1994 historical fiction novel by Umberto Eco set in the 17th century during the historical search for the secret of longitude. The central character is Roberto della Griva, an ...

(Jeonnarui seom) by Umberto Eco * Shamanism (Shamaniseum) by Mircen Eliade * Metamorphoses (Byeonsin iyagi) by Ovid * Men and Symbols (Ingangwa sangjing) by Carl Jung

Awards

Dong-in Literary Award The Dong-in Literary Award ( ko, 동인문학상) is a South Korean literary award named after novelist Kim Dong-in, established in order to praise the literary achievement of The Republic of Korea. In commemoration of the Korean modern literatu ...

(1998) *

Daesan Literary Awards The Daesan Literary Awards () are one of the most prestigious literary awards in South Korea. Prizes are awarded annually to selected works of poetry, fiction, drama, literary criticism, and translation. As of 2016, each prize includes a monetar ...

(2008) * Korean Translation Award (2008)

References

External links

두산백과 이윤기 (Lee Yun-gi)

Doosan Encyclopedia ''Doosan Encyclopedia'' is a Korean language encyclopedia published by Doosan Donga (두산동아). The encyclopedia is based on the ''Dong-A Color Encyclopedia'' (동아원색세계대백과사전), which comprises 30 volumes and began to be p ...

한국현대문학대사전 이윤기 (Lee Yun-gi)한국현대문학대사전
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lee, Yun-gi 1947 births 2010 deaths Korean writers South Korean translators 20th-century translators