It was more than a pleasant surprise for South Koreans that the Swedish Academy's Nobel Committee announced this year’s Nobel Prize in literature winner on Thursday in Stockholm: Han Kang.
Han, who has won a number of fans outside of South Korea with translated works including “The Vegetarian,” has become the first South Korean honored with the world’s most prestigious literary award.
It was the second Nobel Prize for the country after then-South Korean President Kim Dae-jung's Nobel Peace Prize in 2000 in recognition of his endeavors to nurture democracy and improve relations with North Korea.
Han became the 121st laureate of the prestigious award and the 18th woman to receive the illustrious prize. She is also the first Asian female winner.
Mats Malm, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, said Han was recognized for “her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.”
“In her oeuvre, Han confronts historical traumas and invisible sets of rules and, in each of her works, exposes the fragility of human life,” The Swedish committee said. “She has a unique awareness of the connection between body and soul, the living and the dead, and in her poetic and experimental style has become an innovator in contemporary prose."
The 53-year-old writer has built up her literary reputation both at home and abroad with her thought-provoking explorations of human suffering and resilience against the backdrop of the turbulent history of Korea. Her recognition outside of Korea soared after she won the International Booker Prize in 2016 for “The Vegetarian” -- the first honor for a Korean writer that also illustrated her universal appeal to global readers and critics.
“I am grateful for being chosen as the laureate,” Han said in a statement Friday. “The amount of warm words of congratulations that poured in throughout the day like an enormous wave surprised me.”
Amid a flood of congratulatory messages and public attention, Han said she would not hold a celebratory press conference in consideration of the ongoing wars in Ukraine and Gaza. Instead, her publishers said she will share her thoughts through her acceptance speech at the awards ceremony slated for Dec. 10 in Stockholm.
The Nobel award for Han marks a significant step forward for Korean literature, which had long been seen as a fringe market in the global publishing industry for a lack of notable works available in English and other major languages.
The country’s literary works slowly won the hearts of readers and earned the appreciation of critics in recent years thanks to the efforts to individual writers. In addition, the Literature Translation Institute of Korea and the Daesan Foundation have led the globalization of Korean literature by training and discovering talented translators who have introduced the country’s leading writers to readers across the world.
Han’s masterful “The Vegetarian” is a case in point. It was translated into English in 2015 by British scholar Deborah Smith in a rendition that pulled at the heartstrings of foreign readers. Supported by Smith’s translation, the novel clinched the International Booker Prize in 2016.
Given that translation plays a pivotal role in the globalization of Korean literature, both the Korean government and private foundations are encouraged to nurture promising translators with in-depth knowledge of Korean culture and excellent literary skills to support high-quality translations of Korean literature.
Following the surprise news of Han’s Nobel Prize, major bookstores in Korea witnessed a surge in sales across the spectrum of Han’s works. People lined up in front of a major bookstore in central Seoul, but her books quickly sold out, demonstrating immense public attention.
Han’s rise to global fame with the Nobel Prize, meanwhile, does not mean that Korea is a culturally mature society. Han had been placed on a cultural blacklist by the Park Geun-hye administration around a decade ago, and “The Vegetarian” was discarded from some school libraries in Gyeonggi Province just last year for “inappropriate sex education materials for teenagers.”
For all the regrettable facts, however, it is time to celebrate and congratulate Han, from the blacklist to Nobel laureate.
