Yang Gwija (born 1955) (Korean: 양귀자; Hanja: 梁貴子) is a South Korean writer. Yang Gwija was born July 1, 1955, in Jeonju, Jeollabuk-do and graduated from Wonkwang University in 1978 with a degree in Korean Literature. She later moved to Seoul after her marriage in 1980. Yang made her literary debut with the short stories Starting a New Morning and The Door Already Closed. In 1986 she achieved popular success with the release of her collection of linked short stories (yeonjak seosal) Neighbors in Wonmi-dong, for which she is still most famous. This collection was a painstaking depiction of the lives of people on the periphery of industrial culture. In 1988 Yang won the Fifth Yoo Juhyoen Literature award and followed up by winning the even more prestigious Lee Sang Literature Award in 1992.

Yang Gui-ja Quotes

1. “Nothing poisons love more than honesty. If love lasts until the day we die, we will live without showing our real self to our beloved until the day we die. Love makes us more beautiful and distorts us. Love takes our impulse to lie to an extreme.”
— Yang Gui-ja