South Korean Author Han Kang Wins 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature

South Korean author Han Kang has been awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature “for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life,” Al Jazeera reports, citing Mats Malm, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy’s Nobel Committee.

Han, 53, becomes the first South Korean writer to receive the prestigious award. She was “having an ordinary day, having just finished supper with her son” when the news was delivered to her over the phone, said Malm.

Nobel committee chairman Anders Olsson praised Han for her “physical empathy for the vulnerable, often female lives” of her characters. He described her work as “confronting historical traumas and in each of her works exposing the fragility of human life.”

The literature prize, which carries a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor ($1 million), has long been dominated by men. Han is only the 18th woman to win the award, the last being Annie Ernaux of France in 2022.

Han, born in 1970 in Gwangju, South Korea, began her literary career in 1993 with several poems published in the magazine Literature and Society. Her prose debut came in 1995 with the short story collection Love of Yeosu.

Her international breakthrough came in 2007 with the novel The Vegetarian, a disturbing tale of a woman whose decision to abstain from meat leads to devastating consequences.

Han further explored the themes of trauma and violence in her 2014 novel Human Acts, set in her hometown of Gwangju. The novel gives voice to victims of the 1980 Gwangju Massacre, a brutal crackdown by the South Korean military.

The Nobel Committee described Han’s work as characterized by “a double exposure of pain, a correspondence between mental and physical torment with close connections to Eastern thinking.” This is exemplified in her 2013 novel Convalescence, which explores a painful relationship between a main character and her dead sister, intertwined with the theme of a leg ulcer that refuses to heal.

Han will receive the prize, including a medal, on December 10.