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S. Korean Nobel winner Han Kang prefers to stay out of the limelight

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Han’s ‘The Vegetarian’, which tells the story of an ordinary woman’s rejection of convention from three different perspectives, also won the Booker Prize in 2016.

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Free Malaysia Today
Han Kang is only the second South Korean to receive a Nobel prize, after former president Kim Dae-jung. (AFP pic)

SEOUL: South Korean author Han Kang, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature yesterday, has vowed after receiving other top literary awards that she would continue writing “as if nothing had happened”.

The 53-year-old is the first South Korean to receive this honour, the Swedish Academy hailing “her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life”.

Han’s “The Vegetarian”, which tells the story of an ordinary woman’s rejection of convention from three different perspectives, also won the Booker Prize in 2016.

She said after that award, which caused a spike in international sales on top of her more familiar South Korean market, that she hoped to stay out of the limelight.

“I took the subway here,” she told reporters at the time. “I want to continue living as if nothing had happened.”

She is only the second South Korean to receive a Nobel prize, after former president Kim Dae-jung received the Peace Prize in 2000 for his efforts to end tensions with North Korea.

Han’s works are known for their profound and thought-provoking narratives, often exploring themes of violence and trauma. Her 2014 novel “Human Acts” was inspired by the 1980 massacre in her home city of Gwangju, when pro-democracy protests were brutally suppressed by the military.

And 2016’s “The White Book” is set in Warsaw and covers the turmoil, death and cruelty of war.

“I believe writing a novel based on a historical event is not just about recounting past events but about exploring human nature,” Han said in an interview with the Yonhap news service last year.

She also said in a 2023 lecture in Gwangju that “the violent scenes depicted in the novels are not intended to reveal violence, but to stand on the other side of it”.

‘Inherited literature DNA’?

Han’s father was also a renowned novelist and, when “The Vegetarian” became 2007’s most-read book in South Korea, local media praised her “inherited literature DNA”. Her father responded that she had “surpassed him a long time ago”.

Han has said that writing is her way of making sense of the world. “For me, to write is to endlessly question what is life, what is death, who am I,” she said in a 2015 interview with the Literature Translation Institute of Korea.

“When I write, especially when I’m writing novels, I’m exchanging one, two, three, sometimes four years for that book.”

Many in South Korea expressed shock and delight at her win after other potential winners, including poet Ko Un, failed to attract the Nobel Academy’s attention.

“I think many writers like me had given up, thinking there is a limit to how Korean literature can be perceived to international audiences,” Bae Yoon-eum, a novelist, told AFP.

“I was just stunned when I saw the news, my heart stopped but I am so happy. I am so proud that South Korean literature is finally being recognised.”

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