South Korean author Han Kang is awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature

South Korean novelist Han Kang wasn’t expecting the call telling her she had won one of the greatest honors a writer can aspire for: the Nobel Prize in Literature. 

“Han Kang was having an ordinary day, it seems, and had just finished supper with her son when we called her about the award. She was really unprepared for this,” said Mats Malm, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, which organizes the prize.

Some of Han’s most popular books include The Vegetarian, which won the Man Booker International Prize for fiction in 2016, Greek Lessons and Human Acts. 

Her writing “confronts historical traumas and, in each of her works, exposes the fragility of human life,” said Anders Olsson, the chair of the Nobel committee during the Nobel prize announcement. “She has a unique awareness of the connections between body and soul, the living and the dead, and in her poetic and experimental style has become an innovator in contemporary prose.” 

Born in Gwangju in 1970, Han is the daughter of novelist Han Seung-won. She graduated from Yonsei University with a major in Korean literature and was enrolled at the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program in 1998.

Alongside her writing, Han also devoted herself to music. In 2007, Han released a CD with ten songs that she composed and recorded herself to accompany her essay collection Quietly Sung Songs. 

“Her work in crossing the boundaries between art forms is clearly reflected in her writing, which has a broad span in terms of genre,” added Olsson. 

Han’s major international breakthrough was the novel The Vegetarian, which has been translated into twenty-three languages since its first publication in 2007. The novel is told in three parts and showcases a “harshly effective yet poetic portrayal,” as Olsson described it, of the violent consequences that entail when the protagonist refuses to eat meat. 

On December 10th, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death, Han will be honored in person at the Stockholm Concert Hall in Sweden. 

Besides Han, only one other Korean is a Nobel laureate: South Korean President Kim Dae-jung. This makes Han Kang the first South Korean author to win the award.