Background
Lee Yeong-do (Korean: 이영도; Hanja: 李英道) was born in 1972 in Busan, South Korea. His family moved to Masan, South Gyeongsang Province, when he was two years old, and he grew up there. He studied Korean language and literature at Kyungnam University, entering in 1991. Before becoming a full-time writer, he worked as a computer academy instructor in Masan.
Dragon Raja and the Birth of Korean Fantasy
Lee began writing seriously around 1993. His debut work, Dragon Raja, was serialized on HiTel (a Korean dial-up internet service) starting October 3, 1997, and published in print in 1998. The novel sold close to 2 million copies across 4 languages.
Dragon Raja is widely credited with two things: sparking the expansion of Korean fantasy literature as a genre, and legitimizing web fiction ("Internet literature") as a serious literary form. HiTel was one of Korea's early dial-up bulletin board services, and Lee's serialization on the platform helped prove that fiction published online could reach mainstream audiences. Before Dragon Raja, fantasy was a niche in Korean publishing. After it, the genre exploded. Lee is often called the father of modern Korean fantasy fiction.
A sequel, Future Walker, followed in 1999. He also wrote Polaris Rhapsody, another novel serialized on HiTel.
The Bird That Drinks Tears
Lee's most ambitious work, The Bird That Drinks Tears, was serialized from March to August 2002 on HiTel, then published as four hardcover volumes by Golden Bough (an imprint of Minumsa Publishing Group). The novel sold over 600,000 copies in Korea.
Each volume is themed after one of the four races in the story:
"Nhaga Who Extract Their Hearts"
"Rekon Who Pursue Their Desire"
"Tokkebi Who Play Their Fire"
"Humans Who Seek Their King"
A sequel, The Bird That Drinks Blood, continues the story in the same universe. The world Lee built across these novels is the foundation for Project Windless.
International Recognition
In 2022 and 2023, translation rights for The Bird That Drinks Tears were sold to publishers in 12 countries, including the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Poland, and the Netherlands. The total advance royalties exceeded 600 million won (approximately US$500,000), the highest overseas sale for a single Korean novel at the time.
The English translation, titled The Heart of the Nhaga, was translated by award-winning translator Anton Hur and is scheduled for release by Harper Voyager (a HarperCollins imprint) on June 2, 2026. As of early 2026, the novel has been translated into 17 languages.
Connection to Project Windless
KRAFTON licensed the rights to Lee's world for their game. Project Windless is set approximately 1,500 years before the events of the novels, during the founding of the Arajit Kingdom. The game draws on Lee's races (Rekon, Nhaga, Tokkebi, Humans), geography, and cultural systems, but sets its story in a period the novels left largely unexplored.