Having overcome a troubled childhood, ‘Drifting House’ writer is fascinated by survivors


Author Krys Lee found out what her “obsessions” are after writing her first collection of stories. They are “survivors of different forms,” or “people who don’t quite belong.”

And the Korean-American writer’s obsessions are evident in her powerful debut collection, “Drifting House” (Viking/Penguin Press). The stories take place in Korea, the U.S. and even North Korea, but all of her characters are struggling to survive and belong.

“I think my preoccupation with survivors has to do with the fact that I’m not just interested in the ordeal,” Lee told The Korea Herald in Seoul. “I’m also interested in the life after (their struggles) and how you move on, and how people forge a life in spite of all that.”

A number of the pieces in her collection feature the kind of marginalized Korean characters that we have seen in the news stories, sometimes only as part of statistics, over the past two decades.

We’ve seen them in stories on the 1997 Asian financial crisis, on the frantic “Korean” trend to send children to study overseas, and on the growing numbers of divorces and broken families.

They are our “goose” fathers, who work in Korea after sending their families abroad for the children’s education, the unhappy divorcees who leave Korea in search of a new life, and the countless white-collar workers who ended up on the streets during the 1997 financial crisis.

In these stories, Lee makes keen and engrossing observations on Korea’s hierarchical work culture, office politics, and the contemporary Korean family life. 

“I have a very strong sense of justice-slash-injustice, so I get angry very easily,” Lee said.

“One of the things (while living in Korea) that got me really angry was that everyone I saw around me, including the ones that I cared about, would become less of a person over time as they had no time and life to be the individuals they used to be.

“I’m also fascinated by power in general. The power of society, corporate structures, advertising, and all different kinds of pressures on the individual.”

Lee was born in Seoul, moved to the U.S. at age 4, and studied in both America and England. Some of her other stories in the collection take place in the U.S., and deal with the marginalized and tragic experiences of Korean immigrants ― sometimes involved with incest and murder. Lee said the stories reflect her own personal experiences growing up in California although they are not autobiographical.

“The whole point of fiction for me is to be somewhere where you can make things up and imagine,” Lee said.

“But you can’t run away from your own life. You can only write what you can imagine. And I think the world I imagine or am able to imagine was not always bright.”

Having survived a difficult childhood ― consisting of violence, financial challenges, and illnesses ― Lee said she came to be interested in life’s challenges and failures, as well as the universal loneliness.

“My father was a pastor, and when you belong to a pastor’s family you have to be a postcard for everyone else in the immigrant community,” Lee said.

“But our family was anything but that postcard family. So everything was a secret. I felt like I could not share my true life with anybody. That was where the loneliness really came from. There really was no way for anyone to really know me because our whole life was a secret. My sister and I didn’t like to be ourselves as much as possible.”

Almost all of her characters in her collection, regardless of where they are, are either struggling or marginalized. The collection’s title story, “Drifting House,” in fact deals with children escaping famine in North Korea. Lee has been involved with activism in support of North Korean refugees ever since making Seoul her home about 10 years ago.

“I feel like here are the people who survived one of the greatest ordeals on this planet today,” Lee said.

“They somehow manage to make their way here and some of them have a wicked sense of humor. And there are some that I know who are just extraordinary individuals. They’ve gone through so much and yet have moved onto become really amazing human beings and contributed back to their community.”

Lee will be holding a book reading at “What the Book” bookstore in Itaewon, Seoul, at 6 p.m. on June 16.

For more information on Lee and her works, visit www.kryslee.com.

By Claire Lee (dyc@heraldcorp.com)