The 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded to South Korean author Han Kang. Born in 1970 in Gwangju, South Korea, she moved to Seoul with her family at the age of nine. She comes from a literary background, her father being a renowned novelist. Alongside writing, she is also dedicated to art and music, which is reflected in all her literary production.
Han Kang, who writes poems and novels in Korean, was rewarded “for her intense poetic prose which confronts historical trauma and exposes the fragility of human life,” explained the jury in a press release.
Han Kang’s work is characterized by this double exposure of pain, a correspondence between mental torment and physical torment closely linked to Eastern thought.
Han Kang’s literary career really began with the publication of five poems including “Winter in Seoul” in 1993. His career in the genre of fiction began the following year with his work “Red Anchor”. His published work in Korea includes “The Fruit of My Wife” (2000), short stories including “The Black Deer” (1998), “Your Cold Hand” (2002), “The Vegetarian” (2007), “Leave, the wind rises” (2010) and “Greek Lessons” (2011).
She is the first South Korean to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. The only other South Korean to win a Nobel Peace Prize dates back to 2000, when former President (1998 to 2003) Kim Dae-Jung was crowned for “his work for peace and reconciliation with North Korea.
