[Kim Seong-kon] The Nobel Prize in Literature and the task of translation

The news that novelist Han Kang has won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature came as a wonderful surprise to the Korean people. We feel it's been a long time coming: Whereas Japan already has three Nobel laureates in literature and China has two, Korea had none until last week. At last, Korea has become a country with a Nobel Prize winner in literature.

These days, Korea is well known to the world, thanks to the immense popularity of Hallyu. In a sign of this recognition, McDonald's sold BTS Meals for some time, and Coca-Cola is now selling a K-wave zero sugar product. In 2020, the Korean movie “Parasite” received six Academy Awards. In addition to the fame of its pop culture, Korea has now impressed the world with its literary works, too, which was acknowledged by the Nobel Prize, thereby accomplishing for Hallyu a “rondure complete,” as Walt Whitman might have put it.

To become universal, literature requires translation, because unlike music, dance or art, it can only be accessed through written language. Therefore, an excellent translation is a crucial prerequisite for a literary work to be read and praised around the world. Indeed, the famous Italian writer Italo Calvino said, “Without translation, I would be limited to the borders of my own country. The translator is my most important ally. He introduces me to the world.”

Han Kang is lucky to have a translator as gifted and prominent as Deborah Smith, who enabled Han’s works to cross the borders of her country and meet foreign readers. People say that had it not been for the superb translator Edward Seidensticker, Japanese novelist Yasunary Kawabata could not have received the Nobel Prize in Literature. The same thing may apply to Deborah Smith and Han Kang, because no matter how great a writer is, he or she cannot be known overseas without translation.

Indeed, Smith played a pivotal role in bringing this great honor to Han Kang and South Korea. Therefore, Smith deserves our profound gratitude and appreciation. In the past, some people maliciously exaggerated Smith’s minor mistakes in her translation of “The Vegetarian.” Han Kang’s receiving the Nobel Prize must have made those people ashamed. Instead of finding fault, they should have been grateful to Smith for her dedication to translating Korean literature into English.

Behind this honor are the hidden efforts of the Literature Translation Institute of Korea. LTI Korea is staffed by able, competent people who speak foreign languages fluently and have a wide network of translators and publishers overseas. LTI Korea also translates Korean literary works into 35 languages and publishes them overseas.

In 2014, when I was President of LTI Korea, my staff members and I flew to the UK with Han Kang and other major Korean writers to promote Korean literature. In 2016, we went to London again and appointed Deborah Smith as an official LTI Korea translator. When a BBC reporter came to interview me, I explained why Han Kang’s works and Smith’s translations were so laudable.

The Swedish Academy praised Han’s “intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.” Indeed, in “The Vegetarian,” Han brilliantly depicts the maladies of our contemporary society, such as the self-righteous belief that “I am absolutely right and all others are wrong.” With her uniquely poetic prose, Han deftly links this attitude to various types of violence in our society, particularly against those who are different from us.

Han opens our eyes to physical, institutional, and more subtle, invisible forms of violence. Reading the novel, I have also realized that even the vegetarian protagonist herself may be interpreted as exercising violence against others by detesting carnivores and believing they are wrong. In “Human Acts,” Han illustrates the violence committed by the state against its people during the Gwangju Democratic Uprising in 1980.

Rightwing critics are concerned about the potentially negative influence of some of Han’s novels on Korean young people because they depict our tragic historical events from a leftist perspective. They argue that in her 2017 New York Times article, Han wrote that the Korean War was a proxy war and brought up the brutality of the US troops during the conflict, without mentioning the massacres of civilians by North Korean troops and Communist guerrillas.

However, Han Kang is not a radical leftwing writer who spreads leftwing ideology. Rather, she portrays the psychic trauma of those who are victimized by violence, and explores ways to heal those psychological wounds. It would be wrong, therefore, if rightwing critics tried to drag her achievement into the ideological and political arena.

We are proud to finally have a Nobel laureate in literature in our country. We are grateful to Han Kang, Deborah Smith and the Swedish Academy. Let us forget domestic ideological clashes and controversies for a moment, and celebrate this meaningful occasion together instead.

Kim Seong-kon

Kim Seong-kon is a professor emeritus of English at Seoul National University and a visiting scholar at Dartmouth College. The views expressed here are the writer’s own. -- Ed.