TOKYO (Kyodo) -- Novelist Lee Hoe Sung, a second-generation Korean resident of Japan who became the first foreign recipient of the country's prestigious Akutagawa literary award, died on Jan. 5 from aspiration pneumonia, his family said. He was 89.

He was born on Karafuto, now Russia's Sakhalin Island, which was under Japanese rule from 1905 until the end of World War II. In 1947, Lee settled in Japan's northernmost prefecture of Hokkaido.

Lee, a graduate of Waseda University in Tokyo who also actively spoke out about politics on the Korean Peninsula and international affairs in addition to writing novels, won the award in 1972.

Against the backdrop of Korea's division, he depicted love and fading ethnic identity across generations in works that captured the lives of Koreans scattered abroad.