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It has been known that the maiden work of a writer tends to reveal more of his inner-most unconscious materials as his defense system is less tightly organized and less meticulous and as his conscious literary technique is not fully developed. On the basis of this postulation the authors have tried to explore the unconscious creative motives of Choing-Joon Lee, one of the most influential contemporary Korean writer, by analyzing his two short stories, ’Discharge’, the maiden work, and ’A Fool and an Idiot’, written two short stories, ’discharge’, the maiden work, and ’A Fool and an Idiot’, written two years after the former. ’Discharge’ is a story about a man in mid-twenties, hospital in-patient suffering from peptic ulcer. His hospitalization implies his regression with a wish to be an infant nestling in the mother’s breasts and his peptic ulcer an oral deprivation. In bed this young man recalls two episodes in the pats : the one his father had locked him in the barn for two days around the age of ten after he was found fondling with his mother’s inner-wears in the rice sheaves in the barn and the other his nickname of ’the snake catcher’ in his days of army service. These two recollections implies his unresolved oedipal conflict. Thus this story reveals oral deprivation, unresolved oedipal conflict and ambivalence toward dependency. ’A Fool and an Idiot’, which brought a fame to the writer and is said to had been written soon after his elder-brother’s death is a story about two brothors. The elder borther, a surgeon, abruptly cases his clinical practice after death of a girl whom be had performed an operation upon and writes an auto biographical novel about his childhood and army service days during Korean War. In the novel-in-the-story, the elder brother recalls his experiencing of shock with sadness to witness the end of life of a deer at a deer hunting in his early teens and his selfish role as a bystander while a tyranical and sadistic corporal shoot the injured, helpless enlisted man to the death for their survival during the escape from the encirclement of the enemy force. Knowing that Lee, writer, had lost younger brother during the childhood, the assumed that the girl, the deer and enlisted man symbize the writer’ deceased younger brother and that sibling rivalry, hostility and guilt out survival are the creative motives of the writer.
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