Jeong Yi-hyeon (born 1972) is a South Korean

novelist A novelist is an author or writer of novels, though often novelists also write in other genres of both fiction and non-fiction. Some novelists are professional novelists, thus make a living wage, living writing novels and other fiction, while other ...

Life

Jeong Yi-hyeon was born in

Seoul Seoul, officially Seoul Special Metropolitan City, is the capital city, capital and largest city of South Korea. The broader Seoul Metropolitan Area, encompassing Seoul, Gyeonggi Province and Incheon, emerged as the world's List of cities b ...

in 1972. She graduated from

Sungshin Women's University Sungshin Women's University () is a Private university, private women's college, women's university located in Seongbuk District, Seongbuk-gu, Seoul, South Korea. It was founded by Dr. Sook-Chong Lee in 1936. The university comprises ten colleg ...

Graduate School, and studied in the Department of Creative Writing at

Seoul Institute of the Arts Seoul Institute of the Arts () is an arts university in Ansan, Gyeonggi Province, South Korea. The Namsan campus in Seoul is used for presentation of arts productions and convergence with industry. The Ansan Campus opened in 2001 and is used for ...

Career

Jeong Yi-hyeon began her literary career in 2001. In 2002, she received the New Writer's Award by Moonji. Soon thereafter, her short story ''The Loneliness of Others'' (타인의 고독) received the Lee Hyo-seok Literary Award, and ''Sampoong Department Store'' (삼풍백화점) received the Modern Literary Award. Jeong Yi-hyeon is also an innovator in the field of Internet serialization in Korea, having written her second novel ''You Do Not Know'', on the Kyobo Book Center blog. Initial posting of chapters resulted in 400,000 visitors to the serial.

Works

In opposition to the Korean literary tradition of focusing on the marginalised and dispossessed, Jeong Yi-hyeon depicts the dating, marriage, career lives, desires and conflicts of urban women. Her works are frequently set in the wealthy

neighborhood of

Gangnam Gangnam (), sometimes referred to as the Greater Gangnam Area, is a geographic and cultural region in Seoul. While Gangnam can refer to the entire region of Seoul south of the Han River, the region is generally defined as consisting of the city ...

. She is known to describe those things in a sharp and cheerful way. ''My Sweet City'' (달콤한 나의도시) is considered to be the beginning of her fame. It is regarded as the origin of representative South Korean

chick lit "Chick lit" is a term used to describe a type of popular fiction targeted at women. Widely used in the 1990s and 2000s, the term has fallen out of fashion with publishers, with numerous writers and critics rejecting it as inherently sexist. Nove ...

. After ''My Sweet City'' was published, it ignited a chick lit craze in Korea. ''My Sweet City'' is considered to describe accurately women in their 30s. It was made into a

Korean drama Korean drama (), also known as K-drama or Koreanovela, refers to Korean language, Korean-language television shows made in South Korea. These shows began to be produced around the early 1960s, but were mostly consumed domestically until the rise ...

, and aroused sympathy from women in their 20s and 30s. LIST Magazine summarizes her work: :Jung chooses to handle this reality through a “politics of masquerade” in the Baudrillardian sense. Jung’s characters happen to be young women with office jobs who are blatantly well-adjusted to the system. They are vicious and not ashamed of their desires to climb the socioeconomic ladder. In “Romantic Love and Society,” marriage is a means of moving up to higher social classes. In “Trunk,” fashion and cars are status symbols. The women are so conniving and sly that they are subject to ridicule in the end, which is Jung’s point. By portraying individuals who have become perfect embodiments of consumer capitalism, Jung reveals the phoniness of these individuals and the situation that surrounds them. Jung thus explores ways for literature to remain political in an age where politics to have lost its relevance.

Awards

Source: * Literature and Society New Author Award (2002) * Yi Hyo-seok Literary Award (2004) * Hyundae Literary Award (2006)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Jeong, Yi-hyeon Living people 1972 births Sungshin Women's University alumni Seoul Institute of the Arts alumni South Korean novelists South Korean women novelists South Korean women writers