Han Kang becomes second South Korean Nobel laureate after former President Kim Dae-jung, who was awarded the peace prize in 2000
SEOUL
Author Han Kang won the Nobel Prize in literature Thursday, becoming the first South Korean to get the honor, a surprise feat that had her country rejoicing in disbelief.
The Swedish Academy announced Han as this year’s laureate, recognizing the 53-year-old “for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.”
Han is the first Asian female winner in literature and the second South Korean Nobel laureate after former President Kim Dae-jung, who was awarded the peace prize in 2000.
“In her oeuvre, Han Kang confronts historical traumas and in each of her works exposes the fragility of human life,” the Nobel Committee said. “She has a unique awareness of the connections between body and soul, the living and the dead, and in a poetic and experimental style, has become an innovator in contemporary prose.”
Each Nobel Prize is worth 11 million Swedish crowns (US$1.1 million).
The Swedish Academy recognizes achievements in literature, science, medicine, economics and peace. The prizes were created through the will of Swedish scientist and businessman Alfred Nobel and have been awarded since 1901, with the economics prize being a later addition.
Han first shot to fame by winning the Man Booker International Prize for fiction in 2016 for “The Vegetarian.” Her Nobel Prize is expected to catapult Han further into the international spotlight.
Han was born in November 1970 in the southwestern city of Gwangju as the daughter of novelist Han Seung-won. She later moved to Seoul with her family and graduated from Yonsei University, majoring in Korean language and literature.
She began her literary career in 1993 by publishing poems in the winter issue of the quarterly “Literature and Society.” The following year, she made her debut as a novelist when her short story “Red Anchor” won a literary contest hosted by the Seoul Shinmun daily.
Han is acclaimed for creating a unique literary world that explores universal human issues, such as death and violence, through a poetic and lyrical style.
Notably, she has given fictional form to the deep darkness and wounds of modern Korean history through novels like “Human Acts” (2014), which deals with the pro-democracy people’s uprising that occurred in 1980 in Gwangju, and “I Do Not Bid Farewell” (2021), which portrays the tragedy of the Jeju April 3 Incident through the perspectives of three women.
Her other notable works include “Yeosu,” “The Fruit of My Woman,” “Your Cold Hands,” “Black Deer,” “The Wind is Blowing” and “Greek Lessons.”
Previous laureates include American novelist Ernest Hemingway, English author Rudyard Kipling, Irish playwright Bernard Shaw, French writer Albert Camus and Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez. In 2016, American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan became the first musician to win the award.
The Nobel Prize award ceremony takes place at the Stockholm Concert Hall in the Swedish capital each Dec. 10, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death.
According to a report, the Swedish Academy’s Nobel Committee announced the winner Thursday in Stockholm. Han was recognized “for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life,” said Mats Malm, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy.
Read: Mathematics prizes have a gender problem
Han became the 121st laureate of the prestigious award and the 18th woman to receive the illustrious prize.
Her win marks a historic moment for South Korea, 24 years after then-President Kim Dae-jung was honored with the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000.
Han has garnered global recognition for her powerful exploration of suffering and resilience, winning the International Booker Prize in 2016 for “The Vegetarian,” which was also a first for a Korean.
Her other notable works include “Human Acts,” a finalist for the Booker Prize in 2018, and “I Do Not Bid Farewell” (2021), which earned her France’s Prix Medicis for foreign literature last year.
Another report says that six-days of Nobel announcements opened Monday with Americans Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun winning the medicine prize. Two founding fathers of machine learning — John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton — won the physics prize on Tuesday. On Wednesday, three scientists who discovered powerful techniques to decode and even design novel proteins were awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry.
The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced Friday and the economics award on Oct. 14.
Read: Would the Chinese President be the Nobel Laureate of Peace?
______________
Courtesy: The AsiaN, Korea Herald and The Korea Times
