Yi Kyoung-Ja (born 1948) is a South Korean novelist.
1. Life
Yi Kyoung-ja was born in Yangyang, Gangwon Province. She studied creative writing at Sorabol College of the Arts and made her literary debut in 1973 when she won the Seoul Shinmun New Writer’s Contest with the short story "Hwagin" (확인 Confirmation). In 1988, Yi's short story collection Jeolbanui silpae (절반의 실패 Half a Failure) caused a sensation, addressing the position of women in Korean society in a way that was revolutionary at the time. A prolific writer, her published works include Kkopchune sarang (꼽추네 사랑 Hunchback’s Love), Suni (순이 Suni) and Sebeonjjae jip (세번째 집 The Third House). She is the recipient of the Hahn Moo-sook Literary Award.
2. Writing
One of the salient features of Yi's works is the flowing style of her sentences. It is within internal character dialogue, however, where her lively prose shines the most. Yi often uses such dialogue as a means of revealing characters' conflicts and anguish. In these internal conversations, she uses authentic and colloquial language without excessive embellishment. Her novels feel genuine to readers due to the realistic effect created by her natural use of everyday language. Even during the 1980s, when ideological discourse dominated literature, Yi Kyoung-Ja focused on the caged life of women, similar to that depicted by Guy de Maupassant in Une Vie. In her works concerned with female transformation, two major types can be identified.
One of Yi's novels begins by introducing a married female protagonist who is fretting over the institution of marriage and her husband's indifference. The heroine ultimately ends her marriage after meeting another man, her true love. In Yi's works, her female characters domesticated under the institution of marriage but later reborn as "warriors of love" are originally middle-class housewives enjoying comfortable lives. Honja nuntteuneun achim (혼자 눈뜨는 아침 Waking up Alone in the Morning), is a work of this type.
Yi has also used the biographical format in her novels. In one of Yi's works, the reader is introduced to a heroine who had once been full of hope as a little girl, before being cast into tragedy and suffering after marriage, a transformation that Yi describes in minute detail. In the oral tradition that existed before the modern literary era, women verbally recounted their life stories. In the same fashion, narrators in Yi Kyoung-Ja's works recount tales from long lives centered on marriage, birth, unfaithful husbands, family feuds, and other critical events. Yi's Saranggwa sangcheo (사랑과 상처 Love and Hurt) and Jeongeun neuljido ana (정은 늙지도 않아 Affection Never Withers) are good examples of the kind of work described above. Such stories present personal life history in a form that sheds light on modern Korean history interwoven with that of the individual.
