Jung Ihyun


Jung Ihyun is a South Korean novelist.

Life

Jung was born in Seoul in 1972. She graduated from Sungshin Women's University Graduate School, and studied in the Department of Creative Writing at Seoul Institute of the Arts.

Career

She began her literary career in 2001. In 2002, she received the New Writer's Award by Moonji. After that her short story The Loneliness of Others received the Lee Hyo-seok Literary Award, and Sampoong Department Store received the Modern Literary Award. Jung is 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, Jung depicts the dating, marriage, career lives, desires and conflicts of urban women. Her works are frequently set in the wealthy Seoul neighborhood of Gangnam
. She is known to describe those things in a sharp and cheerful way.
My Sweet City is considered to be the beginning of her fame. It is regarded as the origin of representative South Korean chick lit. 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, and aroused sympathy from women in their 20s and 30s.
LIST Magazine summarizes her work:

Awards