Literary Laurels: South Korean Author Han Wins Nobel Prize

Han Kang, known as South Korea's "Kafka," writes stories where plants, instead of insects, push to the forefront of transformation. With works like "The Fruit of My Woman," in which a woman becomes a (withered) houseplant, and the award-winning novel "The Vegetarian," which describes a woman's desire to become a tree, she has made an international name for herself. On October 10, Han became the first South Korean author to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, an accolade endowed with 11 million Swedish kronor (approximately 1 million dollars). The Swedish Academy praised her slender, surreal books for their "intense poetic prose" and for addressing both "historical traumas" and "the fragility of human life." Her literary style, which is both poetic and painfully evocative, particularly highlights the cruelties against women. Born in 1970 in Gwangju as the daughter of a writer, Han followed in her father's literary footsteps early on. As early as the 1990s, she published poems and short stories, quickly gaining national fame. Her international breakthrough came with the English translation of "The Vegetarian" by British scholar Deborah Smith in 2015. English readers were fascinated by the story of housewife Yeong-hye, who abstains from meat, leading to a dark, erotic narrative about desire and rebellion—and the novel won the 2016 Booker International Prize. Her second work published in English, "Human Acts," focuses on the state's machinery of torture and death, narrating a massacre in Gwangju in 1980 during the protests against South Korea's last military coup before the democratic transition. Rather than listing the hundreds of victims, Han paints the senses with words, allowing readers to feel the smell and sight of fading bodies. Anders Olsson, chairman of the Nobel Committee, praised her "unique perception of the connection between body and soul." With Han Kang's Nobel Prize, South Korea achieves another cultural triumph. In recent years, the country won an Oscar for Best Film ("Parasite"), created the biggest Netflix hit ("Squid Game"), and produced the world's best-selling band. The Korean Wave—the boom of interest in the country's culture—has continued to gain momentum.