Yang Seok-il was born in Osaka, Japan, to a couple from Korea’s Jeju Island who settled in Japan during the Japanese occupation of the Korean Peninsula. Yang, whose Japanese name is Yan Sogiru, graduated from Osaka Prefectural Kozu High School and did odd jobs including driving a taxi after a business he pursued failed. His 1980s non-fiction work Takushi doraiba nisshi (Taxi Driver Diary), based on his experience as a cabbie, was made into the 1993 critically acclaimed film All under the Moon. He also won the 1998 Yamamoto Shugoro Prize of Japan for his semi-autobiographical novel Blood and Bones, which was also made into a film released in 2004.
