Lee Hoesung


Lee Hoesung was a Japanese Zainichi Korean novelist. He wrote under the pen name Ri Kaisei, the Japanese reading of his Korean name. In 1972, he became the first ethnic Korean to win the Akutagawa Prize for his story "The Woman Who Fulled Clothes". Other representative works of his include Mihatenu Yume and Hyakunen no tabibitotachi.

Life and career

Lee was born on February 26, 1935 to Korean immigrant parents in Maoka, Karafuto Prefecture, and lived there until age 10. After the surrender of Japan which ended World War II, Lee's family, having mixed in with Japanese settlers, escaped the Soviet troops and fled Karafuto. They went to a processing center in Nagasaki that repatriated migrants from former territories of the Empire of Japan, but finding themselves unable to return to Korea as they had planned, they settled down in Sapporo, Hokkaidō. Lee's older sister was left behind in Karafuto; in his later works, he describes the traumatic experience this was for him. From Sapporo's West High School, Lee went to Tokyo's Waseda University, where he studied literature. While there, he was active in exchange student activities. After graduation, he first aimed at doing creative work in Korean, but then decided to do it in Japanese instead. He was also employed at the Choson Sinbo, a Korean newspaper run by the pro-North Korea ethnic activist group Chongryon, but would later separate himself from them, and in 1969, having been awarded the Gunzo Prize for New Writers for Kinuta wo utsu onna, dedicated himself to literature. Kinuta wo utsu onna was notable at the time for its sporadic use of Korean words.
In 1970, he secretly visited South Korea, and went again after winning the Akutagawa Prize in 1972. At that time, he held Chōsen-seki rather than South Korean nationality. Afterwards, due to the problem of his nationality, he was refused a visa several times by the South Korean government, and it would not be before November 1995 that he was granted permission to visit again. However, in 1998, with the start of Kim Dae-jung's Sunshine Policy, he was able to obtain South Korean citizenship. He was later criticised by fellow zainichi writer Kim Sok-pom for his comments about the democratization of South Korea and his naturalization as a South Korean, over which the two had a vigorous debate in magazines.
On the problem of North Korean abductions of Japanese, Lee stated: "The confession of Kim Jong-il, who apologised for his errors, should be accepted by Japanese people in the spirit of historical consciousness and the peace constitution."
Lee died on January 5, 2025, at the age of 89.

Awards

Major works

Title translations are not official English titlesKinuta wo utsu onna Watashi no Saharin Kayako no tameni Imujingawa wo mezasu toki Ryūminten Kanōsei toshite no "Zainichi"
  • ''Chijō seikatsusha''