She Was Told She Might Not Live Long. She Left Law to Become a Writer

Long before Min Jin Lee became the internationally recognised author of Pachinko, she was a young woman who had been told that her health might not allow her a long life.

Lee was diagnosed with hepatitis B when she was young. Doctors warned her that serious complications could come in her 20s or 30s, a possibility that shaped the way she thought about her future.

At the time, she was working toward a conventional professional life. She studied law and eventually became a corporate lawyer in New York.

But the career that appeared secure from the outside did not feel like the life she wanted.

Lee has recalled working extremely long hours as a young lawyer. After one particularly demanding period, she decided to leave the profession.

She was only 26.

Her decision was not based on a guarantee that writing would succeed. In fact, she had no publishing contract and no clear path into the literary world.

She simply knew that if her life might be shorter than expected, she wanted to spend it doing something that mattered deeply to her.

So she began writing.

The reality was much harder than she had imagined.

Lee had won writing prizes while she was at Yale, but becoming a professional novelist proved to be a completely different challenge. For years, she wrote without knowing when — or whether — her work would ever be published.

Her first novel, Free Food for Millionaires, eventually took about 11 years to sell. By then, Lee had spent years explaining to other people that she was a writer even though she had no published book to show them.

She has described those years as difficult and sometimes humiliating. People would ask where they could buy her book, and she had no answer.

Still, she continued.

Her next major project took even longer.

Pachinko, the novel that would eventually bring her international recognition, took decades to develop. Lee researched Korean history, immigration and the lives of Koreans in Japan before shaping the story around several generations of one family.

The novel was eventually published in 2017 and became a bestseller. It was later adapted into an Apple TV+ series, introducing Lee’s work to an even wider audience.

Yet her journey was never simply about becoming famous.

Lee has said that she wanted to write stories about people whose experiences were often overlooked. Her novels explore family, identity, immigration, sacrifice and the ways people survive difficult circumstances.

Her latest novel, American Hagwon, continues that interest in the pressures faced by families and young people, while also examining questions about education, status and what makes a meaningful life.

Now 57, Lee is still writing and working on another novel.

Looking back, the decision she made at 26 appears to have changed the entire direction of her life.

She did not know how long she would live. She did not know whether she could make a career from writing. And she certainly did not know that one of her novels would eventually reach millions of readers.

What she did know was that she did not want to spend her time waiting for life to begin.

So she left the career that seemed safe, accepted years of uncertainty and kept writing.

Her story is ultimately not just about literature. It is about what a person chooses to do when the future feels uncertain — and how a decision made in fear can sometimes become the beginning of a completely different life.

Sources: The Guardian.