You will be hard-pressed to find anyone here who expected that Han Kang would win the 2024 Nobel Prize for Literature, the world’s highest literary honor.
Although the Korean novelist has received many other prestigious international honors and is widely popular among readers in South Korea, she is 53 and the prize has traditionally been awarded only to writers in the twilight of their careers.
“I thought she might win one day, but I didn’t expect it to be so soon,” said Jeong Kwa-ri, a literary critic and former professor of Korean literature at Yonsei University in South Korea. “Most Korean writers considered top contenders are in their 70s and 80s.”
On October 10, Han Kang appeared on television during a news program at Seoul Railway Station.
(An Yongjun/Associated Press)
Han Guoyu was commended by the Swedish Academy last week “for her poetic prose that confronts historical trauma and exposes the fragility of human life.” She is the first Asian to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in its 123-year history. She is also the second Korean woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Then-President Kim Dae-jung won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000 for his diplomacy with North Korea.
Han has kept a low profile since her victory, reportedly declining a celebration planned by her father, citing the war still raging. Gaza and Ukraine. But other parts of the country have been talking about “Hankang syndrome”.
As of Tuesday, book retailers in the country reported sales of more than 800,000 copies of Han’s works, with sales expected to top the 1 million mark this weekend. There were long lines in stores and they sold out quickly, while printing presses worked around the clock to produce more products.
Mr. Han was born in Gwangju City in 1970 into a literary family. Her father, the famous novelist Han Sung-won, noted with delight that his daughter had risen above his own.
“In the past, Han Jiang was called Han Chengyuan’s daughter, but now I am Han Jiang’s father, Han Chengyuan,” he said in a 2016 interview.
Many of Han’s novels are intimate portraits of the violence experienced by ordinary people, spanning South Korea’s long history of authoritarian rule and the history of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. feminist struggle Current.
In May 1993, South Korean riot police used tear gas to disperse students in Seoul.
(Kim Jae-hwan/AFP/Getty Images)
Her most famous works in Korea include “Human Behavior” a book about Quan Doohuan In 1980, the military dictatorship massacred civilians following pro-democracy protests in the city of Gwangju.
Public debate over the massacre has long angered South Korean conservatives, who have sometimes tried to downplay the government’s role or promoted conspiracy theories that the protests were an act of subterfuge by North Korea.
Under the conservative government of former President Park Geun-hyeThe daughter of another military dictator, Han was blacklisted in 2014, barring her from receiving government support along with other creatives deemed ideologically unpopular.
“Human Behavior” is told from multiple perspectives and draws inspiration from real-life characters, including high school student Moon Jae-hak who was shot dead by military government forces deployed to Gwangju.
“I was so happy, I thought my heart would stop beating,” Moon’s mother, Kim Gil-ja, said of Han’s Nobel Prize in an interview with local media. “Her book succeeded in spreading the truth about this incident to the world.”
Han recommends “We Are Not Divided” to those new to her work, a novel that explores the massacre of civilians carried out by the South Korean government on Jeju Island in 1948, during a period of anti-communist paranoia. The English translation of the novel, which won France’s Medici Prize last year, is expected to be published in January 2025.
But the most famous—and notorious—of Han’s works are “Vegetarian” This is a darkly surreal story of a woman’s descent into madness after she vows to give up meat. The novel has been hailed as a fable about women’s rebellion against South Korea’s patriarchal society and won the 2016 Man Booker International Prize, which was won jointly by Han and her British translator Deborah Smith.
But the prize puts the book at the center of a heated debate about literary translation. Critics say the award-winning English translation by Smith, who only started learning Korean a few years ago, not only made basic errors, such as confusing the Korean word for “foot” with “arm,” but altered the text far beyond its original meaning. translation parameters.
“The translation of Korean literature has long faced many obstacles, and more ‘pure’ translations have failed to succeed,” said literary critic Chung.
The issue has long plagued the country’s literary scene, and South Korea’s film and television industries have produced global hits such as “Parasite” or “Parasite.” “Squid Game” Also wondering why Korean books fail to generate the same level of global interest.
“Therefore, there is an increasing tendency in translation to ignore the distortion of the original text and instead cater to the tastes of foreign readers,” Zheng said. “The Vegetarian is a great example of that.”
writing In a 2016 interview with The Times, Korean-American literary translator Charse Yun acknowledged Smith’s “masterful” sentences but said the translation had “transformed into a ‘new creation.'”
“I find it difficult to come up with an adequate analogy, but imagine Raymond Carver’s austere, modern style adorned with the exquisite phrasing of Charles Dickens,” he wrote.
Smith, who translated two of Han’s other books, defended her work in a 2018 article for the Los Angeles Review of Books, arguing that given the differences between any two languages, “there cannot be one translation Not ‘creative’.
For many critics, the question of translation remains an open question. But for better or worse, Han’s latest and most prestigious honor has now cemented Korean literature’s script for global success.
Despite his misgivings about Smith’s translation, Yin sees plenty of reasons for optimism today.
“The field has been greatly opened up, and more people have access to Korean literature,” Yoon said of Han’s global rise.
“I am delighted for my former students and other talented translators who now have the opportunity to bring other Korean voices to the field.”