VOL.69/2024.04

 

Writer Lee Byung-Ryul

A Traveler that Sings About Love

 

2023.02.20

 

Traveling gives you the hope that something new will begin, as you walk away from monotonous daily life and meet new people and new things, in a fresh environment. There is a writer looking to live an adventurous life, traveling and embracing the unknown experiences that travel offers. Writer Lee Byung-Ryul sometimes comforts readers with poems and prose touching the emotional realm, and sometimes he sings about love. Following is an interview with writer Lee Byung-Ryul, who hopes to tell more people that love is absolute and is a necessity in our lives.

 

 

It’s an honor to have you on K-Book Trends. Please introduce yourself to our subscribers.

 

Hello, everyone. I’m Lee Byung-Ryul. I write poems and prose and take photographs, too. I’m a person that prefers doing things on the desk to things that involve having to move a lot.

 

From your introduction, the sentence “I became a writer after writing things I like and don’t like” is pretty impressive. It’s been 28 years since you debuted as a writer. Compared to the very first list that you wrote, how have you changed today?

 

Some things have frequently replaced the old ones on the list. I don’t think the things I like have changed very often, but the things I don’t like have changed a lot. Learning unknown aspects of the new people I meet has always been fun. Writing poems and taking pictures have always been my interests. People say that life is filled with new tastes, but I realized once more that people don’t change so easily.

 

Your career spans a variety of areas, just like your works – you are a writer, the head of a publishing house, and the owner of a flower garden. So what motivated you to try different things?

 

I don’t like spending much time in a particular field. That’s a bit stifling. I think I have DNA for wandering around a lot, but I’m also a very curious person. Take away my curiosity, and I won’t be alive. I’m always excited to new learn new things. Rather than completing things that I want to do one after another, my thoughts and actions are synchronized. I have no hesitation in doing the things I wish to do. I think I was born like that.

 

 

I tend to put my thoughts into action right away, rather than staying in one place for a long time.

 

 

You’re currently making books as the head of Dal Publishers. As you have been writing for a long time, there must be a special standard for choosing books for publication. What is the difference between selecting books to publish and writing a book yourself?

 

While working at Dal Publishers, I found it fun to work with people publishing their first book. The style and mentality of those who write their first book are so different. They’re fresh, if I can put it that way. So, I often choose books based on such elements that cannot be found in the existing writers.
As for my own works, I try to write prose as if I were talking to someone close to me about things I saw and felt. For poems, I try to write about things that can trigger people’s memories, so that when they read my poems, they can realize, “Ah, yes. I feel the same way.” So, my state of mind to write is like wanting to sing about things that might be very trivial or very intimate.
The common thing about choosing a book for publishing and writing my own work is that I hope many people will read it. Aside from book production, if you think the book you made is on display in a bookstore, anyone in the publishing industry would have the same hope. Well, we live in a time when there are fewer people reading books.

 

You’ve been writing both poems and prose. Where does a poem start, and what leads to prose?

 

Poems begin with little things. They may be a few lines written after watching through the window of a train or studio. Things I feel, but other people don’t, become poems, too. The process of rewriting the same line several times, sometimes concealing resonant expressions and sometimes enlarging love, can also be called a poem itself.
In the meantime, I think prose is a medium to deliver an incident or episode I’ve been through to another person. So, it might be something like a radio commentary or chatting. I believe that an artist’s achievement by completing a poem is more important than focusing on “delivering” the message it has. And I believe prose is a genre that makes me aware of the audience’s face – whether they are listening to what I have to say in writing.

 

You have written many works about love, such as And I Heard That You’re Happy (Dal Publishers). What is “love” to you? And what message did you intend to convey by choosing love as the topic?

 

People with love energy have less of a hard time living their lives. They have a fountain of energy in them. Some are born with it. But, I came to think that those who were not born a fountain of energy might live a harder life very often. Love follows those with good attitudes and behavior. Rather than saying that people trying to cut off love from others live a difficult life, I want to say that people should try to become a loving person themselves first, discovering and sharing love with others. People with a high energy of love are more favorable to others, have a lot of things they want to do, and are active in everything they do. Maybe it’s a pretty obvious fact. Yet I will not teach love through books. Love is absolute, and I wanted to remind people that love plays a large part in our existence.

 

 

The book Drawn (Dal Publishers), first published in 2005, is still regarded as one of the best travelogues. What motivated you to write works about traveling, including Drawn?

 

I have been traveling a lot. One clear thing is that I travel alone. If you travel alone, you can hear stories of people you encounter. You can’t do that when you’re traveling with somebody. I mean, if there was someone next to me on the trip, there wouldn’t be foreigners starting a conversation or sharing food with me. And I try to have my heart open while traveling. People I’ve met during the trips treat me like a “guest.” Exchanging the very humane parts of each other encourages me to make a record of it, which eventually becomes a travelogue.

 

You must have had a variety of experiences while traveling to other countries. Is there an episode or a thought that you haven’t discussed in your books but would like to share with us?

 

Well, Iceland has a population of 340,000. They live tranquil lives, respecting peace. They say that young people find it boring to live there because there is not enough entertainment, and that is true. So they use an application to meet and hang out with new people. It’s an app that checks whether the person they’re interested in is in a kinship relationship because the population is so small. So, this app tells you people that you shouldn’t be in love with. I call it “no-love-allowed app,” but I feel a little sad that they had to use such an application first. I’m thinking of writing about this someday.

 

Your world would be far more expansive as you have traveled to many countries. Can you introduce one of your books to our international readers?

 

I would choose The Person Next to Me (Dal Publishers). I wrote it on my travels in Korea. It has many stories about “people.” The person next to you and the scenery before my eyes are different from each other’s point of view, aren’t they? Because if you get used to something or someone, you tend to overlook their value.

 

 

We look forward to hearing more from your future career. What story do you want to share in the future? What are your plans and goals?

 

I’m preparing for a new poem collection set to be published in October this year. Unlike the prose I’ve published until now, I’m thinking of adding “experiential traveling” or the “story of living in one place for a long time” in the next prose collection. The stories for it will be collected naturally, I hope, as I walk slowly and reflect on many things.

 

 

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