This year’s Nobel Prize in Literature 2024 was awarded to Korean national Han Kang for her “intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life”.
Born in Gwangju in 1970, Han studied Korean literature at Yonsei University and made her literary debut as a poet, publishing five poems.
This included one of her hallmarks, Winter in Seoul, in the winter issue of Munhak-gwa-sahoe (Literature and Society) in 1993.
The talented Korean writer launched her career as a novelist the following year, by scooping the 1994 Seoul Shinmun Spring Literary Contest with Red Anchor.
She published her first short story collection, Yeosu (with the Munji Publishing Company) in 1995.
In 1998, Han took part in the University of Iowa International Writing Programme for three months, with the support of the Arts Council Korea.
Some of her publications include the short story collections, Fruits of My Woman (2000) and Fire Salamander (2012); and novels Black Deer (1998), Your Cold Hands (2002), The Vegetarian (2007), Breath Fighting (2010), Greek Lessons (2011), Human Acts (2014), The White Book (2016) and I Do Not Bid Farewell (2021).
Her poem collection, I Put The Evening In The Drawer, was published in 2013.
Among other considerable accolades, Han won the 25th Korean Novel Award for her novella, Baby Buddha, in 1999, the 2000 Today’s Young Artist Award by Culture Ministry Korea, the 2005 YiSang Literary Award for Mongol Spot and the 2010 Dongri Literary Award for The Wind is Blowing.
She was also awarded the Manhae literary prize for Human Acts (2014) and Hwang Sun-won literary award (2015) for the novella, While One Snowflake Melts. Her recent novella, Farewell, won the Kim Yujung Literary Prize in 2018.
Han’s The Vegetarian won the 2016 Man Booker International Prize, while Atti umani (Human Acts) won the 2017 Malaparte Prize in Italy.
In addition, she was awarded the San Clemete Prize for The Vegetarian in Spain (2019) and was selected as the fifth writer for the Future Library project in Norway in 2019.
The novel, Dear Son, My Beloved, will be held in the Deichman Library in Oslo until its scheduled publication in 2114.
The Swedish Academy lauded Han’s work for her “unique awareness of the connections between body and soul, the living and the dead”.
Through her “poetic and experimental style”, the academy said, Han “has become an innovator in contemporary prose”.
Six Nobel prizes were also awarded for achievements that have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind.
The 12 laureates’ work and discoveries range from protein structures and machine learning to fighting for a world free of nuclear weapons.
Han has kept her media engagements to a minimum by sharing her desire to simply and quietly write stories.
After the announcement of her top achievement, the books of South Korea's first Nobel Literature Prize winner are selling at unprecedented speed, surpassing the million mark as readers seek to better indulge in her works.
This was over the first six days of the announcement, according to three large Korean bookstore chains.
It is reportedly unusual for several books by a single author and that are not new releases to sell that many copies within a week.
Sales of e-book versions reached around 70 000 during the same period.
Along with her acclaimed literary work, The Vegetarian, Human Acts and We Do Not Part have made up the top three most-sold books.
“It’s an unprecedented record because it’s a challenge in itself to surpass one million copies in the digital era, compared to when it was common in the ’80s and ’90s. This goes beyond people just wanting to read the novel and shows their strong desire to own the actual book. The author’s new releases will probably see increases in sales as well,” said publicists.
Despite her popularity, Han, during an interview with Swedish public service television company SVT, said she did not want to be in the spotlight.
Instead, she wanted to remain quiet, peacefully thinking about the meaning of the prize.
She said she would like to concentrate on finishing her new novel and then writing her Nobel Prize acceptance speech.
Han is set to receive her Nobel Prize in Literature at the ceremony in Sweden on December 10.
Cape Times