An accident that hit a 19-year-old girl

LEE Yoonja, the fifth in a family of seven siblings with four daughters above and two brothers below, did not know what difficulty was as she had a lot of dreams even though she was 19 years old and had to retake to go to the university she wished to go to. She was more diligent because she could see the end to the hard journey and the bright future that is ahead of her. In early November 1985, she left home at 6 a.m. to go to the library two days before the big exam, but there was a traffic accident at a crosswalk without traffic lights.

It was a major accident in which cervical vertebrae 3 and 4 were injured. She spent two and a half years in the hospital. Under the neck, the motor and sensory nerves were paralyzed and there was no sensation.

"I believed that I could recover soon. I didn't know my physical condition properly for more than a year after the accident because all my family members hushed and hid the actual results."

As her hospital life lasted for a long time, she pushed herself to her wheelchair to ask the doctor about her condition, and went to the rehabilitation department.

"It was April at that time. I took a deep breath and walked through the front yard of the hospital, and the cherry blossoms were so beautiful that I forgot my situation and was intoxicated. When I met my doctor and asked him to tell me the truth, he said, "The best way is not to make it any worse at this state, and there are no other solutions." As I walked back to my room, this time the cherry blossoms in the yard couldn't have looked so cruel. I cried my eyes out under the blooming cherry blossoms.”

Spine cord disabilities comes with other various complications such as shortness of breath, bladder inflammation, bedsores, and blood circulation disorders, and Yoonja became very sensitive and refused to eat and take treatment. 

One day, she hear her mother crying trying her best to make no noise so that her daughter could not hear all night, and this is when she finally accepted her disability. She grabbed her books and read for 15 hours a day. Her reading continued even after leaving the hospital.

Marriage and Child Care

While studying at a self-study course to obtain a degree, in the year 1993, she met a man who was two years older than her online in 1995. LEE Yoonja, 31, and LEE Hyunsoo, 33, were both serious about life.

"She left a profile with a brief introduction of herself under the title of 'I want to live freely' on Hi-Tel's 'Duri Hana'. After a while, her husband sent her an email. Not knowing that she had disabilities, they hand good feelings for each other, but in the end, she told him the truth."

However, her current husband, LEE Hyunsoo, did not care about her disabilities. He was more active, saying, 'Let's meet offline.' She avoided him because she felt burdened to meet him, but her husband, who lived in Gwangju, came up on the weekend and taught her computer.

"At first, he came on Saturdays, but starting from some point, he came on Saturday, and slept in my brother’s room and left on Sunday. “He taught me computer, when finished, he offered me to take care of my nephew, who is an elementary school student, and when we were finished taking care, he would make other excuses to come again...”

LEE Hyunsoo, who lost his parents early and grew lonely with his sister, easily got soaked in the harmonious atmosphere of LEE Yoonja's family and proposed to her that fall.

"One day, we went for a walk in the park together, and my husband asked, 'What do you think about marriage?' I said, "What do you think, marriage is not my style." The husband said, "If a man and a woman meet and like each other, they can create a family. What are you so complicated about? Think of it as a way to get married.' I pretended to be indifferent on the outside, but I was very nervous on the inside."

She stubbornly refused to marry as she believed 'Love is not math. It is love that can only be given or received,' he persistently persuaded. Even the in-laws who opposed it at first could not break the husband's stubbornness. Finally, in June 1996, the wedding ceremony was held.

"Approving my will of marriage to my husband, I told him that I might not be able to have a child. I thought I couldn't have a baby on my own. But our baby came to us right away. My husband was thrilled to learn that my pregnancy, but in the meanwhile I was worried. I went to the rehabilitation department and discussed about it, and they said it's possible to have a baby with a cesarean section. Everything was much appreciated."

Everyone was worried that the mother would be dangerous, but the husband was not afraid because the child was a gift from heaven. At eight months of pregnancy, a healthy son was born by Caesarean section. The wife continued to study even after pregnancy and earned a bachelor's degree in February 1997 and gave birth to a son, Jubin, a few days later.

After the baby was born, the husband set up a computer store right across the district of the apartment they were living in, just in case he needed to urgently come home whenever his loving wife and son was in need of help. 

“I am always feeling sorry for my husband. With the work that he does outside of the house, he comes home without any fuss and takes care of the baby. It also breaks my heart to see him opening the fridge taking out the side dishes and heating up the stew to eat his late dinner.”

The husband also has a lot of things to feel sorry for his son too. He says that this is because there is not much I can do for you, so I had to take care of everything on my own since I was young.

Beginning of Writing 

She started writing when Jubin was about five years old. This is when Jubin started his kindergarten, and she had more free time. Her free time gave her the desire to communicate with the world and also gave her the physical and mental freedom from childcare.

"My husband always encouraged me by saying, 'You'll do well if you do literature.' As a writer, it's a late bloomer. However, physical disabilities do not have a particular effect on the world of art. I wanted to write a novel about the heartwarming stories that I’ve experienced in my life.”

Her brain was full of stories, but it was not easy to write them in words. Her ten fingers were curled up and she couldn't press the keyboard buttons. She sat in front of the computer and bit a 25-centimeter wooden stick that looked like chopsticks into her mouth. The program finally opened and with her uncomfortable left hand, pressing each vowel completing each letter as she created the magical document.

As a confident novelist, "One day in 2001, living a normal marriage life with my child, my husband brought me a ‘Notice of Literature Award for the Disabled’ from the newspaper, and requested me to apply”

At the awards ceremony (the person in the middle in the wheelchair is Jubin's mother, novelist LEE Seojin, and the person holding the wheelchair in the back is her husband, LEE Hyunsoo)

Her first short story, "Life" which she wrote under her husband's persuasion, won a temporary work at the Korea Disabled People's Literature Awards.

"It was amazing to receive an award for my first work. That gave me courage."

In 2003, "Wedding Bouquet" was selected as the best short story category at the Korea Disabled Literature Awards, and in 2005, it was elected in the middle novel category at the Korea Disabled Literature Awards.

"The work I won this time was written in 2004. I went to the Museum of Modern Art with my husband and got a motif from the World Peace Planning Exhibition. I spent time with my son, Jubin, who is in the 3rd grade of elementary school, so I couldn't write much during the day, so I started at around 10 p.m. and worked until 2 or 3 a.m.”

“The Hidden Story” with words over 300 pages is a novel about two man and women who accidently meet at a Vietnamese travel, and travel together for 3 days. They reunite at an art museum in Korea after 7 years, and the reviews from the judges are mostly positive, mentioning that "The style is sophisticated and the composition is stable."

This is when LEE Yunja, gained confidence, and began to challenge for the General Literature Prize. Since then, the she used a pen name LEE Seojin, and this could be the beginning of her life as a real writer. Of course, there were many ups and downs, but one by one each began to be recognized.

The more she wrote, the more she wanted to write as stronger writer, so she entered the expert course of the Department of Literature and Creation at Chungang University Graduate School of Arts in 2010 and took classes twice a week. The more she learned, the more she thought she lacked, but she was immersed in the charm of the novel.

In 2011, she won the Grand Prize of Silla Literature, short story “Waruk”, and she won the 8th East-West Literature Award for the short story “Attic Man”, the 1st Cheongang Literature Award for the middle story “For Grisabella”, and the 15th SHIM Hoon Literature Award for the middle  story “On the Riverside”.

The SHIM Hoon Literature Award-winning novel “On the Riverside” is a novel about the precarious life of a couple living by translating and working as part-time instructors, and was praised by the judges for "seriously dealing with the problems that our times have to talk about."

Her first gold award was awarded at the 7th KIM Manjoong, Linerature Awards with KIM’s “The Cloud Dream of the Nine” commemorating his achievements, who remains as a historical figure of Korean literature., The judges commented, "Of the 178 entries, “Last Makeup” is decided as the award-winning work without difficulty." The judges would have fainted if they knew that they had completed the full-length feature by biting chopsticks with their mouths and taking consonants and vowels of the keyboard one by one because they do not reveal their disabilities when applying. The winning film “Last Makeup”  is the first book to be published under her name.

Assistants 

At her house in Ansan, Gyeonggi-do, older sisters who live closely in the apartment complex often came for help. As far from washing her face she can't lift or forget a spoon of rice and a piece of tangerine on her own, but she has four older sisters, so her family lived well.

Her husband's role was to go around libraries and bookstores and collect vast amounts of data. Her work was produced by adding inspiration to the data collected by her husband, and at some days at the ceremony, her heart was touched by the love and joy of her husband’s bouquet of flowers. 

Could it be his mother’s influence? Her son, who dreamed of becoming a young literary man, always had “Baekseok Poetry” in his arms and eventually entered the department of literary creation at one of the universities. 

A friend of her child’s father; Siwoo’s father is a fierce reader of her novel. Whenever Jubin’s mother publishes a book and presents it to her acquaintances, she faces difficulties to sign her own book with her handwriting. Instead, he created a nickname with the meaning that smell lasts for life in front of her active name LEE Seojin. This showed that physical disability was no problem in literary activities, meaning that smells goes for life. Someday, she mentioned on preparing to write a novel about Gaya's long history.

When questioned about her goal as a writer, she mentioned ‘I don’t have a huge goal as a writer. I just want to write a novel little by little’ expressing her simple dream. In September 2018, there was a red light for her health, and went through a difficult brain surgery. But after that, she announced that she would like to take a break from writing for 2-3 years.

While living fiercely, writer LEE Seojin also faced up to her middle ages. Born in 1966, at the age of 56, she was able to work actively as a writer, so it will be great to hear back from her with new work in good health