[2] A poet of delicate sensibilities, Lee began his career depicting the gloomy everyday life under the Park Chung-hee military dictatorship in the 1970s and 1980s from the perspective of ordinary people—the subject he has explored with much love and sympathy.
Such love has manifested in his desire to seek more than mere confessional release in his poetry: Lee aims to transform his art into a song for the suffering masses.
His early poems are long and prose-like even, expressing his compassion towards the poor and the weak, and at the same time, embodying his fierce determination to preserve his humanity even amidst hardships.
Lee's poems from this period recall the fact the poet had made his literary debut with sijo or traditional Korean poetry characterized by highly restricted form.
Lee has acknowledged that it is perfectly fine for him if his poems are no more than small “ripples” that carry his heart out to the readers and “lap at their feet for a moment like fallen leaves” before disappearing.