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struggle against successive dictatorial, repressive South Korean government regimes.
Kang-baek Lee began his distinguished career in that tumultuous era and, for three decades, unremittingly has called attention to abuses of power, loss of human dignity, diminished mores, and other South Korean sociopolitical realities. He has remained steadfastly dedicated to his calling as a playwright, his work being translated into many languages and performed in many nations. However, only one of his plays, Wedding (1974), has been published in English translation. Allegory of Survival: The Theater of Kang-Baek Lee by Alyssa Kim and Hyung-jin Lee is the first English-language anthology collected from Kang-baek Lee's oeuvre of more than 40 plays and a major contribution to the limited English-language translations of modern South Korean drama in general.
Among theatre scholars interested in South Korean theatre, Kang-baek Lee perhaps is best known as the premier writer of social commentary in the form of allegories, a form made necessary to skirt draconian censorship laws rigorously enforced up to 1989. His Five (1971) and Watchman (1973) are examples of Lee's allegorical style in the early plays. The Watchman uses a Korean variant of the Peter and the Wolf story to dramatize what happens to society when a watchman (the South Korean government) self-servingly cries “wolf” (i.e., “the North Koreans are coming”). However, it would be a mistake to categorize Kang-baek Lee solely as an allegorist. Korean culture has long valued Confucianism's five relationships: affection between father and son; justice between ruler and subject; complementarity between husband and wife; precedence to the elder over the younger; and trust between friends. Spring Day (1984) is a multidimensional tale that delves into the consequences resulting from neglect of these relationships within a family and, by extension, within the South Korean nation as it underwent explosive economic growth in the 1980s.