Lee Kiho was born in Wonju, Gangwon Province. He made his literary debut when his short story “Birney” won the Hyundae Munhak New Writer's Contest in 1999. He is the author of the collections of short stories, Choi Sunduk: Filled with the Holy Spirit, I Knew If I Stayed around Long Enough, Something like This Would Happpen, Who’s Doctor Kim?, Kang Min-ho, the Church Guy Friendly to Everyone, the novels At Least We Can Apologize, A World History of Second Sons, the novellas Circumstances of the Fire at Mogyang, and the short novels Unbothered Most of the Time, What is Learned in the Cradle is Carried to Summer, and Evidently a Love Story. He currently serves as a professor of creative writing at Gwangju University.
1. Life
Lee Kiho was born in Wonju, Gangwon Province. He studied creative writing at Chugye University For the Arts and earned his Ph.D. from Myongji University Graduate School's department of creative writing. Lee made his literary debut when his short story "Beoni" (버니 Birney) won the monthly Hyundae Munhak New Writer's Contest in 1999. He published his first collection of short stories, Choesundeok seongnyeongchungmangi (최순덕 성령충만기 Choi Sunduk: Filled with the Holy Spirit), in 2004.
Lee remembers listening to his grandmother's stories as a child and credits them as a formative influence on his writing: "[She] believed that the world wasn’t just made of the things we could see with our eyes—that, in fact, the world was made up of more things that were invisible to us. My grandmother told me stories about every elder in the village; stories about the lives they lived and the adventures they had. She also told me mysterious folktales about snakes turning into humans, or about the souls of the dead being absorbed into trees. It was much later that I realized that all my stories were rooted in her."
Lee is the author of three novels and seven short story collections, including Sagwaneun Jalhaeyo (사과는 잘해요 At Least We Can Apologize), as well as a collection of essays. He is the recipient of the Lee Hyoseok Literary Award, the Kim Seungok Literary Award, and the Hwang Sun-won Literary Award. He is currently a professor of creative writing at Gwangju University.
2. Writing
Lee Kiho is considered to be one of South Korea's most unusual writers to the extent that one critic has declared that the conventions of a story cannot be applied to Lee's work. Lee debuted in 1999 with "Birney," a short story that reflects the rhythms of rap as well as pansori, a traditional Korean ballad. The stories following his debut are just as diversely experimental; one story borrows the question and answer method of an interrogation, while another adopts the writing style and typeset of the Bible, and still another uses language that is suggestive of the kind used on a TV cooking show.
Lee is inventive not only with form, but also with his characters, who are a humble and sordid lot: a small-time pimp who dropped out of high school after assaulting a teacher; a third-rate actor addicted to glue; a gang member who had grown up in an orphanage; and a character who ekes out a living by working at a local convenience store. Lee's stories not only feature these back alley types, but also those with abnormal traits, such as a youth who has eyes in the back of his head and a man who falls in love with a flagstaff from where the national flag hangs.
These misfits, who seem to have jumped straight out of tabloids or entertainment programs, are distinctive and, at the same time, very real individuals who can be easily found on the fringes of society. A character named Lee Sibong, who appears regularly in Lee's work, is portrayed a little differently in each story but is, for the most part, a pathetic and naïve flunky with no luck whatsoever, someone who seems to be the epitome of human failure. By ridiculing the lives of these vulgar yet common characters, Lee makes his readers laugh. However, the target of our laughter quickly becomes our own society that is steeped in arrogance and artifice, for the characters’ vulgarity, naiveté, and tragic failures symbolize the failings of our society.
Lee's latest novel, Mogyangmyeon banghwa sageon jeonmalgi: yopgi 43jang (목양면 방화 사건 전말기 - 욥기 43장 Circumstances of the Fire at Mogyang: Job: 43), is the author's answer to the Book of Job: "It takes place after the Bible story; he has a bad relationship with the children born to him after his ordeals and is hurt because of the friction between them. I’m calling it The Book of Job, Chapter 43."
