He later became Professor of Korean Literature at Dongguk University. In his earlier work, Lee Hyong-ki focusses on elements of the natural landscape perceived by a solitary subject. The lyricism is traditional, marked by elements of pathetic fallacy, while the human subject finds, in a closer harmony with nature, a new awareness of human finitude and mortality. In later poems, however, he echoes other forms of experience as he passes from romantic nihilism to a deeper, more philosophical nihilism. The outside universe becomes more threatening, peopled with monsters and dark shadows that threaten the subject at every moment.
Death looms, and in it there are dimensions of violent sensuality to be explored.
There is a sense in which the poem itself, once achieved, becomes the only possible form of resistance against ever-threatening despair. Now in high spring my love, having endured its passion, is wilting away. My springtime is dying like a flower. So let us part, waving delicately, some day when petals are falling heedlessly. My love, my parting, grieving eyes of my soul maturing as water slowly brims in mountain springs.