SUNG-IL LEE, born in 1943 in Seoul, Korea, studied English literature at Yonsei University, Seoul (B.A., 1967), University of California, Davis (M.A., 1973), and Texas Tech University, Lubbock (Ph.D., 1980). After completing his graduate studies, he taught English poetry and drama at Yonsei University from March, 1981, till he retired in February, 2009. While on leave of absence, he taught Korean literature as a Visiting Professor at University of Toronto (January to December, 1987) and at University of Washington, Seattle (September, 1994–May, 1995). He taught in the English Department of Troy University as a Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence for 2002–2003. At present he is Professor Emeritus of Yonsei University.

He has published twelve volumes of Korean poetry in English translation: The Wind and the Waves: Four Modern Korean Poets (1989), The Moonlit Pond: Korean Classical Poems in Chinese (1998), The Brush and the Sword: Kasa, Korean Classical Poems in Prose (2009), Blue Stallion: Poems of Yu Chi-whan (2011), The Crane in the Clouds: Shijo, Korean Classical Poems in the Vernacular (2013), The Vertex: Poems of Yi Yook-sa (2014), Nostalgia: Poems of Chung Ji-yong (2017), Shedding of the Petals: Poems of Cho Jihoon (2019), Do You Know That Faraway Land?: Poems of Shin Sŏk-jŏng (2020), Does Spring Come Also to These Ravished Fields?: Poems of Yi Sang-hwa (2022), Counting the Stars at Night: The Complete Works of Yoon Dong-ju in Verse and Prose (2022), and White Village: Poems in Classical Chinese by Yi Byŏng-ho (2023).

He has published two books of Old English poetry in Modern English verse translation: Beowulf and Four Related Old English Poems (2010) and Beowulf in Parallel Texts (2017). His ongoing publication of English Renaissance drama in Korean translation includes Julius Caesar (2011), Richard II (2011), Richard III (2012), Othello (2013), Macbeth (2014), The Duchess of Malfi (2012), Doctor Faustus (2014), and The Spanish Tragedy (2020). His Korean translation of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales will be published soon.

He received the Grand Prize in translation in the Republic of Korea Literary Awards (1990) and the Fourth Biennial Korean iterature Translation Award (1999), both given by The Korean Culture and Arts Foundation.