Lee Mankyo (born 1967) is a South Korean writer and professor.
1. Life
Lee Mankyo was born in Chungju, North Chungcheong Province, the son of an Anglican priest of a rural parish. Lee studied chemistry at university before switching to Korean literature, graduating from Pai Chai University. He earned his Ph.D in Korean literature from Inha University. Lee made his literary debut in 1992 winning the poetry category of the Munye Joongang New Writer's Contest, and in 1998, when he won the fiction category of Munhakdongne's Story Competition. He won the 2000 Today's Writer Award with his novel, Gyeolhoneun, michin jisida (결혼은, 미친 짓이다 Marriage is Madness). He is currently a professor of creative writing at Hanseo University.
2. Writing
Lee Mankyo's work features a verbal energy reminiscent of a garrulous exchange between gossipers. The various happenings in the lives of ordinary urbanites, which constitute Lee's fiction, are often of serious nature entailing many social implications, yet their style of being told is invariably lighthearted and jovial. Lee has stated that for him “any object, person or situation characterized by authority, exclusivity or piety excites a desire to make light of them—to make them laugh, or make them an object of laughter.” Ultimately, what Lee critiques through his parody is not the conventions of society but the hypocrisy surrounding them.
In Gyeolhoneun, michin jisida, Lee's most well-known novel that was made into a film by the director and poet Yoo Ha, a series of amusing and frank conversations between two lovers strip away the layers of hypocrisy and falsehood surrounding marriage, sex and love in modern age.
His second novel, Meokkone jibe nolleo ollae? (머꼬네 집에 놀러 올래? Will You Come Play at Meokko's House?) paints an entertaining as well as insightful picture of family dynamics during the Asian financial crisis of 1997, known in South Korea as the IMF crisis. The childlike frankness of the narrator allows a candid view of the gravity of the situation and also enables moments of laughter as well as pathos in the novel.
Lee's latest novel, Yesun yeoseonmyeongui hangissi (예순 여섯명의 한기씨 Sixty-six Hangis), is inspired by the Yongsan disaster of January 2009. The novel is structured as a series of interviews with 66 people who knew Lim Hangi, a fictional character standing in for the complex chain of violence and corruption surrounding the incident, in which an occupied demonstration turned into a fire that took the lives of five protestors and a police officer.
