South Korean author Han Kang wins 2024 Nobel Literature Prize for ‘intense poetic prose’

Han was awarded the prize ‘for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life’

Reading Time:3 minutes

A TV screen in Seoul shows Han Kang, the winner of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature. Photo: AP

Published: 7:10pm, 10 Oct 2024Updated: 3:38pm, 11 Oct 2024

South Korean author Han Kang was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature on Thursday for what the Nobel committee called “her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life”.

Nobel committee chairman Anders Olsson praised Han’s “physical empathy for the vulnerable, often female lives” of her characters.

“She has a unique awareness of the connections between body and soul, the living and the dead, and in a poetic and experimental style, has become an innovator in contemporary prose,” Olsson said.

Nobel literature committee member Anna-Karin Palm said Han writes “intense lyrical prose that is both tender and brutal, and sometimes slightly surrealistic as well”.

Han becomes the first Asian woman and the first South Korean writer to win the Nobel literature prize. She also becomes the second South Korean national to win a Nobel Prize, after late former president Kim Dae-jung won the peace prize in 2000. He was honoured for his efforts to restore democracy in South Korea during the country’s previous military rule and improve relations with war-divided rival North Korea.

02:41

South Koreans celebrate after author Han Kang wins 2024 Nobel Literature Prize

Han wins the Nobel at a time of growing global influence of South Korean culture, which in recent years has included the success of films such as director Bong Joon-ho’s Oscar-winning Parasite, the Netflix survival drama Squid Game and the worldwide fame of K-pop groups such as BTS and Blackpink.