[1] In her first year of university, Lee was exposed to national political controversies including pictures from the 1980 Kwangju massacre, which caused her to drop out of college in 1985 to disguise herself as a worker and go to a factory.
She began to read voraciously, debate social issues, and build a personal national consciousness.
[1] She often travels to remote and underdeveloped parts of the world, and served as a volunteer worker in Indonesia for two years.
[4] Lee believes that she cannot write a single sentence about something she has not personally experienced and felt in the deepest core of her being.
Her dependency on real experiences, which explains the small volume of her literary output, may be seen as an indication of a master craftsman or an amateurish approach towards writing; regardless of how she is viewed, however, Lee writes with utmost care and polish.