Lee Yun-gi

Lee Yun-gi (, May 3, 1947 – August 27, 2010) is a prize-winning modern South Korean writer and translator.

Life Lee Yun-gi was born in North Gyeongsang Province, southern Korea, 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's The Name of the Rose and Foucault's Pendulum.

Work

Lee Yun-gi utilizes his knowledge of mythology 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 1998 Lee won the Dong-in Literature Prize 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 The Name of the Rose (Jangmiui ireum) Foucault's Pendulum (Pukoui jinja), The Island of the Day Before (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 (1998) Daesan Literary Awards (2008) Korean Translation Award (2008)