It was less than five minutes that changed everything forever.

The car, carrying a 22-year-old Ewha Womans University student in the passenger seat and waiting for the traffic light to change green, was hit at the back by a drunken SUV driver; the gas cylinder in the car boot exploded; her older brother ― who woke up first in the driving seat after the hit ― pulled her out through the window from the flames just seconds before the entire car exploded.

It was almost 11 years ago that the accident occurred ― on July 30, 2000 ― and her memory of the day has been fading away.

But the third-degree burns that took away 55 percent of her total body surface area ― doctors said it was a miracle she lived ― still remain, all too clearly.

"I heard people click their tongues, saying my life as a woman was over. Yes, I had lost everything including my face and my career prospects," Lee Ji-sun told The Korea Herald.

She majored in early child education because she loved children so much. But the frightening scars all over her torso and face made it impossible to come close to children. She went through 33 surgeries and skin transplants. She had to have all eight fingertips cut, leaving just the tips of her thumbs.

"But even in the deepest despair and loneliness, my life didn't collapse at all … I was still … happy," Lee Ji-sun said during the interview at a caf in Seoul. She recently visited Seoul for a three-week vacation during her Ph.D. program in social welfare at the University of California, Los Angeles.

The 32-year-old is the author of "Ji-sun, I Love You: Renewed Again," a rewritten memoir published on July 30, 2010 ― exactly 10 years later ― combining her 2003 memoir "Ji-sun, I Love You" and 2005 essay "I'm Happy Today, Too."

Her first book swept the nation in 2003, selling more than 300,000 copies on the back of a KBS TV documentary series depicting Lee's desperate fight to live.

Since the 2004 U.S. trip for a brief English-language course, helping hands unexpectedly came to her.

She received two master's degrees in the U.S. ― one in rehabilitation counseling in Boston University and another in social welfare in Columbia University ― worked as an intern at the Ministry of Health and Welfare in the summer of 2009 and finished a full marathon in March to raise funds for the Prume Foundation's establishment of a rehabilitation hospital.

"Death was easier than a wretched life"

Looking healthy and full of energy, Lee did not seem depressed or miserable at all during the interview. Some people even tell her she has become "prettier."

But she is still receiving plastic surgery. She just had a few during the last summer in Korea, while holding more than 60 speeches and testimonies.

But she said she was not afraid of surgery anymore because she has become "so used to it."

No matter how positive she stays, however, she admits that there were too many moments where no one else ― not best friends, not even her mother who took care of Lee almost all the time ― could help her avoid the cruel reality that there was no going back.

Lee wrote in her book that being left to live was a hundred, thousand times more harsh than death.

"There were moments when I unexpectedly found myself reflected in the mirror and thinking it couldn't be reversed. I was facing the reality," Lee said.

The tormenting times include two months of lying in the intensive care unit of Hangang Sacred Heart Hospital where Lee was the only survivor, the excruciatingly painful burn treatments that forced her to wish she could go insane, and so much surgery that her intense screams woke her up from general anesthesia.

"At such moments, I had only two choices ― going up to the roof (to jump off the building) or searching for help from above," said Lee, pointing her finger up in the air.

Although mindful of using religious expressions, she honestly said her faith in Christianity was the biggest strength that gave her reason to make up her mind to "live."

Assured through repeated prayers, she realized that she will be used again to give a message of hope to those who suffer and those who are weak.

"Of course, I sometimes get to think negative things. But if you find just one thing to be thankful out of 100 negative things, you'll see the negative things retreat."

"I found my real self"

The year 2010, for some Koreans, must have been a nightmare for the parents who lost their sons to the Cheonan ship sinking, the people who lost their families to North Korea's attack on Yeonpyeong Island and many more who suffer from poverty, disease and disability.

Lee could not easily offer the right words of consolation to them.

However, after a while, she emphasized that life was a big gift, too big to just give up.

"If I had given up just because I didn't know why it had to be me, I would've missed all the happy moments with my family and friends that happened after the accident. Life itself has a meaning that there is hope," she said.

"Hang in there and be patient, just a little bit more. Your life isn't all yours. Although it seems like the end at that moment, you'll see it's not."

Lee's book is full of the word "gratitude."

Lee said she was thankful for the fact that the drunk driver had his or her car insured so that her family didn't have to "sell the house" to cover the astronomical costs of the burn treatments and surgeries.

Lee still does not know who the driver was and does not want to know the person, she said.

"Because our family didn't know about the person, we were able to face the reality as if a natural disaster had just occurred. If I had known, I'm not sure I had been able to forgive that person," she said.

She was grateful that she did not lose her thumbs which are so important for hands to function.

She was also thankful to the doctor at a private clinic who has been taking care of her plastic surgery for a minimum cost for the past five years.

But above all, she was thankful for the pain she went through for the past decade.

"(Before the accident) I was living in a shell that will disappear soon," recalled Lee, who said she found her "real self" after losing who she was previously.

"So when I see young women frequently visiting the plastic surgery clinic that I go to for treatments, I wish they could focus on more important things than appearance that will wither soon."

Lee just started her Ph.D. in social welfare at UCLA and hopes to finish the course even if she graduates last in the class, just as she did when she finished the March marathon in Seoul the last.

But before that, she wishes to meet "the other half."

"My married girlfriends told me not to get married. But they say so because they're already married," said Lee, smiling.