Yoo Hyeonjong is a South Korean novelist whose works of dramatic historical fiction are well known in his native country.
The work describes how an utterly ordinary and worthless object becomes endowed with great significance as it occasions contact between two people who must remain enemies.
For this simple tale which nonetheless implies indirect criticism of the tragic reality of Korean division, Yoo Hyeonjong received the New Writer's Prize awarded by the journal Freedom Literature (Jayu munhak) in 1961, the year he graduated from the Creative Writing Department of Sorabol College of Arts.
“Giant” (Geoin), for example, features a protagonist who possesses almost super-human strength and will, and this type of larger-than-life hero makes nearly ubiquitous appearance in Yoo's historical novels.
Yoo Hyeonjong's penchant for high drama has led him to become a capable playwright as well: he has written plays Tale of an Yangban (Yangbanjeon) and A Puppeteer for Our Times (Urideurui gwangdaewon).