South Korean writer Han Kang.
Seoul: South Korean writer Han Kang has made her country proud by winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2024. Han Kanghan was born in 1970 in Gwangju, South Korea. She comes from a literary background, her father also being a distinguished novelist. Han Kang was awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature for his deeply poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and highlights the fragility of human life.
The prize is awarded by the Swedish Academy and is worth 11 million Swedish crowns ($1.1 million). Han Kang made his literary debut as a poet in 1993 by publishing five poems, including “Winter in Seoul”, in the winter issue of Munak-gwa-sahoe (Literature and Society). He began his career as a novelist the following year by winning the 1994 Seoul Shinmun Spring Literary Contest with “Red Anchor”. He then published his first short story collection titled Yeosu (Munji Publishing Co.) in 1995. Participated in the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program for three months in 1998 with the support of Council Korea.
Major works of Kang Han
His main works include a short story collection, Fruits of My Woman (2000), Fire Salamander (2012). Black Deer (1998), Your Cold Hands (2002), The Vegetarian (2007), Breath Fighting (2010), and also novels such as Greek Lessons (2011), Human Acts (2014), The White Book (2016), I Do Are the main ones. Apart from this, a poetry collection, I Put the Evening in the Drawer (2013) was also published. Han Kang won the International Booker Prize in 2016 for ‘The Vegetarian’. His most recent novel ‘I Do Not Bid Farewell’ was awarded the Médicis Prize in France in 2023 and the Emile Guimet Prize in 2024. Han Kang’s work is characterized by the dual display of pain, a correspondence between mental and physical suffering with close connections to Eastern thinking, the committee said.