Lee Hye-kyung (born 1960) is a South Korean writer.
1. Life
Lee Hye-kyung was born in Boryeong, South Chungcheong Province. She studied Korean literature at Kyung Hee University and taught high school for two years after graduation. Lee made her literary debut in 1982 publishing the novella Urideurui tteolkyeo (우리들의 떨켜 Our Abscission) in Segyeui Munhak. She has since published three collections of short stories and five novels, most recently Sasohan geuneul (사소한 그늘 A Trifling Shadow). She is the recipient of the Hyundae Literary Award, the Isu Literary Award, and the Dongin Literary Award, among others. Her novel Gil wiui jip (길 위의 집 A House on the Road), winner of the 1995 Today's Writer Award in Korea, received the LiBeraturpreis in Germany in 2004.
2. Writing
Lee believes that she cannot write a single sentence about something she has not personally experienced and felt in the deepest core of her being. Her dependency on real experiences may be seen as an indication of a master craftsman or an amateurish approach towards writing; regardless of how she is viewed, however, Lee writes with utmost care and polish.
Thematically, Lee’s works center on families in different stages of disintegration. Although she is a feminist writer deeply interested in women’s place in family and in society, Lee also departs significantly from the stereotypical feminist perspective of gender dichotomy. The fathers in her works are the oppressors as well as the oppressed powerless against their own “father figures”— society, tradition and conventions that crush them as much as they crush others. In this sense, women and men share the common burden of societal oppression.
A House on the Road, a record of a family history spanning over twenty years, offers an insightful portrait of love and hate, conflict and reconciliation that characterize family interactions. In the process of searching for their missing mother, who suffers from schizophrenia, four brothers and a sister recall memories of their troubled childhood. Their father is a refugee from the North who became successful through hard work and determination. An authoritarian figure deeply steeped in patriarchal tradition, the father makes a habit of physically abusing the mother as a way of alleviating stress from his work.
In her collection of short stories, Geu jip ap (그 집 앞 In Front of That House), fathers embody oppression and violence in a male-centered world that lead to the disintegration of families. The sons of these fathers capture the idea of men as victims of oppression by their own father and by society that burdens them with preconceived notions of manhood and male responsibility.
Compassion rather than anger, and desire for harmony rather than confrontation, characterize the author's attitude toward male chauvinism and women's suffering. Through the image of women as life givers, the author suggests a possibility for overcoming the distortions in patriarchal society to achieve a world of cooperation and mutual dependence.
