Other representative works of his include Mihatenu Yume (見果てぬ夢; Unfulfilled Dream) and Hyakunen no tabibitotachi (百年の旅人たち; Travellers of a Hundred Years).
[2] Lee was born on February 26, 1935 to Korean immigrant parents in Maoka, Karafuto Prefecture (the southern half of modern-day Sakhalin), 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 from the Soviet troops and fled Karafuto.
They went as far as a processing center in Nagasaki for migrants repatriating from former territories of the Empire of Japan,[3] but finding themselves unable to return to Korea as they had planned, they settled down in Sapporo, Hokkaidō.
He was also employed at the Choson Sinbo, a Korean newspaper run by pro-North Korea ethnic activist group Chongryon, but afterwards separated himself from them, and in 1969, having been awarded the Gunzo Prize for New Writers for Kinuta wo utsu onna, threw himself into the literary world.