In a ground-breaking moment this fall Han Kang became the first-ever Asian woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature (and only the second person from South-Korea to get a Nobel award)
The win comes at an interesting time: about 6 years ago the previous top Korean Nobel candidate Ko Un lost his status after some serious mis-behavior towards women. Its worth noting that Han Kangs success shows how things have changed in Korean society
Her writing career took off when she published “The Vegetarian“ back in 07‚ which later got the International Booker Prize; but what really made her special is how she writes about Korean history. Her books look at events like:
- The Gwangju Uprising of 1980
- The Jeju events from the 40s
- Modern-day social problems
Han is part of a special group of Korean artists who went to college right as the country was becoming more free. Her university-mates included Bong Joon-ho who made Parasite and Hwang Dong-hyuk who created Squid Game - they all saw Korea change from a strict government to a free country
The way she writes about how big events affect regular peopleʼs bodies and lives makes her different from other writers. In “The Vegetarian“ the main person stops eating meat because she cant stand violence; in other books she shows how government actions hurt real people (like describing victims of violence in a very real way)
Her books ask hard questions about how people deal with pain and keep going after seeing bad things happen - which makes sense to many people around the world right now