SIU stands for Slave. Inutero; it is the pen name of the author of Tower of God (신의 탑). His real name is Lee Jong Hui. Birthday 29th May, 1986.[1][2]
History
SIU majored in Art Education in college and later undertook South Korea’s mandatory military service. There he met a sun-im (top) that also liked manhwa so he began to draw altogether manhwa. He drew any character arising out of his mind.
According to him the story “was about a guy who entered the Tower chasing a girl that was everything to him and the Tower examined the boy”. Concluding his military service, he had filled up 10 sketchbooks. The argument over those notebooks served him to create ‘Tower of God’.
For more than 6 months, he raised his work on his at Naver’s Challenge League until Naver contacted him and asked if he wanted to publish Tower of God officially. That’s how Tower of God debuted and won fame in a short time.
SIU posts regularly descriptions of random characters appearing in Tower of God in his blog and the Naver’s Cafe. The extra content acts as an expansion material for Tower of God, a great story within Talse Uzer.
He regularly blogs biographies about random characters who feature in ToG or have yet to. It’s all part of his extensive worldbuilding scenario: Tower of God is merely a part of his grand Talse Uzer Story. The universe of Talse Uzer is governed by a set of laws and history can never be changed. As such, there is a very finite aspect to Talse Uzer Stories.
Peculiarities
SIU enjoys trolling readers by introducing gender ambiguous characters. Lately, he has even ironically trolled his own characters (Wangnan discovering that Nya Nia is a guy and Yihwa mistaking Viole for a girl) and even created a character like Kim Lurker.
He apparently likes football and names his characters after football players. He also nicknames his characters after fish. Who would’ve thought of that? And what’s up with Ja Wangnan’s name? Read backwards, it actually reads (Nan-“I am”) (Wangja-“prince”). And SIU’s response? “That’s some genius wordplay, AMIRITE”.
SIU has stated that while he enjoys video games, he doesn’t currently play any. He doesn’t seem to like being considered old.
Fortunately, he has already finished his 2 year army term. Tower of God was born from sketches he drew in the army, in fact. But he has to go back now and then for a short army practice since he will be reserve army for some time.
Over the course of the series SIU received several assistants such as Sweet Pea,[3] Kate Joh and Void-R who assist him with the drawing and animation for the chapters.
His favorite fruit is watermelon. He ate three watermelon in two weeks.
Links to SIU
- SIU’s blog on naver
- SIU’s works on naver
- SIU’s me2day
- SIU’s twitter
- Interview about SIU’s musical taste.
- Lee Jong Hui (SIU)’s first face reveal was at YouTube Interview Video that was posted by WEBTOON YouTube Channel.
- Lee Jong Hui (SIU) attended meet and greet with webtoon fans in Germany, at Frankfurt Book Fair 2013 together along with author of Noblesse and God of Highschool. One of Tower of God Fans managed to filmed the autograph session with author SIU.
- According to the youtube video that was uploaded at February 15, 2015 by “bam lakun” channel, it is said in the video description that this is the first talkshow author SIU ever held for his Tower of God fans in the South Korea.
Trivia
- There might be some misunderstanding between foreign fans before, that SIU might stand for “Slave. In. Utero”. But looking at the fact that SIU’s social media such as @NAVER Blog and @me2day has identical account name which is “inutero”, without any separation marks. It seems like the author actually nicknamed himself as “inutero” over the internet. And perhaps, the pen name SIU actually meant to be “Slave Inutero”.
