In opposition to the Korean literary tradition of focusing on the marginalised and dispossessed, Jeong Yi-hyeon depicts the dating, marriage, career lives, desires and conflicts of urban women. Her works are frequently set in the wealthy
Seoul neighborhood of
Gangnam. She is known to describe those things in a sharp and cheerful way.
My Sweet City (달콤한 나의도시) is considered to be the beginning of her fame. It is regarded as the origin of representative South Korean
chick lit. After
My Sweet City was published, it ignited a chick lit craze in Korea.
My Sweet City is considered to describe accurately women in their 30s. It was made into a
Korean drama, and aroused sympathy from women in their 20s and 30s. LIST Magazine summarizes her work: :Jung chooses to handle this reality through a “politics of masquerade” in the Baudrillardian sense. Jung’s characters happen to be young women with office jobs who are blatantly well-adjusted to the system. They are vicious and not ashamed of their desires to climb the socioeconomic ladder. In “Romantic Love and Society,” marriage is a means of moving up to higher social classes. In “Trunk,” fashion and cars are status symbols. The women are so conniving and sly that they are subject to ridicule in the end, which is Jung’s point. By portraying individuals who have become perfect embodiments of
consumer capitalism, Jung reveals the phoniness of these individuals and the situation that surrounds them. Jung thus explores ways for literature to remain political in an age where politics to have lost its relevance. ==Awards==