Set in 1940s colonial Korea and Japanese-occupied Manchuria, Endless Blue Sky tells the love story between Korean writer Ilma and Russian dancer Nadia. The novel is both a thrilling melodrama set in glamorous locations that would shortly be tragically ravaged by war, and a bold piece of writing espousing new ideas on love, marriage, and race. Reading this tale of cosmopolitan socialites finding their way in a new world of luxury hotels, racetracks, and cabarets, one gets a sense of the enthusiasm for the future that some felt in Korea at the time. Honford Star's edition of Endless Blue Sky, the first in English, includes an introduction and explanatory notes by translator Steven Capener.

“Harbin,” published in the literary magazine Munjang in October 1940, is the leading work from his later years and has recently attracted attention. On top of everything, this short story impressively reveals the problematic circumstances around the 1940s and Lee’s assessment of his own self-awareness. The dialogue between the protagonist who considers himself a skeptic and a cabaret worker, Eura, who says, “I always think I just want to die,” is the main storyline of this short story. This work effectively describes the desolate inner sentiments, feelings, and skepticism of the protagonist who travels to Harbin and the sorrowful sentimentality of the city. In addition, “Harbin” impressively portrays that the Second World War, which broke out in 1939, greatly influenced the city of Harbin, which was located in Northeast China at the time. This is evident especially in the lines describing the closed French and Dutch Consulates on Kitai Tverskaya, the main street of Harbin where Russian stores and Western style buildings are located. The theme of this work seems to be the sorrow of an intellect under colonization, feeling only fundamentally skeptical and depressed, even while conversing with a beautiful waitress at the exotic Harbin’s hotel, cabaret, and café where Tchaikovsky’s chamber music plays.

“Pomegranate” is one of Lee Hyoseok’s shorter pieces of fiction. It follows a plot pattern that became more evident in his later fiction (that written after 1935 or so) in that the protagonist is a woman who suffers from the patriarchal strictures of the Confucian culture of the times. It is implied that the protagonist Jaehee becomes pregnant at the hands of one of her schoolmates and later is pushed into marrying a man she doesn’t love because the union might help her father’s failing business. The man she marries turns out to be a swindler, and her father’s business fails even sooner as the result of his malfeasance. The plot also contains another of Lee’s consistent themes: an unrequited love.

“The Sick Rose,” published in Samcheonli munhak (Three Thousand Li of Literature) in 1938, is the first of two short stories that Lee Hyoseok names using the title of a poem in English. This one, of course, is named after a poem by William Blake. The other is “Leaves of Grass” titled after Walt Whitman’s seminal collection. Both short stories borrow themes from the poems they are named after. In the case of “The Sick Rose” the theme is prostitution and the venereal disease that can accompany the practice. Typical of Lee’s later literature, this story uses the theme of sex as a means to critique what he saw as a hypocritical sense of morality in Korean society.