Peppermint Candy begins with a suicide and then moves backward in time to reveal the sources of the protagonist’s despair. The story follows one man from youthful idealism to complete disillusion during the 1980s and 1990s in South Korea, as the country lurched from police state to economic giant. Lee vividly fashions a trenchant and profoundly moving portrait of a society seemingly irreparably damaged by war, militarism, torture, civil strife and finally economic prosperity.  The protagonist’s life as first a soldier, then a cop and finally a businessman functions perfectly as an allegory for the state of Korean society during those turbulent decades.