Han Kang(1970 — ?)
Han Kang
Corée du Sud
8 min read
South Korean novelist born in 1970, Han Kang is one of the most important voices in contemporary Asian literature. Her work explores violence, traumatic memory, and the fragility of the human body. She is the first Asian author to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Frequently asked questions
Famous Quotes
« Human beings are fundamentally fragile.»
« I write to understand what I cannot understand.»
Key Facts
- Born on November 27, 1970, in Gwangju, South Korea
- Publication of 'The Vegetarian' in 2007, translated into English in 2015, Man Booker International Prize 2016
- Publication of 'Human Acts' in 2014, a novel about the 1980 Gwangju massacre
- Nobel Prize in Literature 2024, first Asian author to receive this distinction
- Her work has been translated into more than 40 languages
Works & Achievements
A novel in three parts about a woman who refuses to eat meat after a traumatic dream and yearns to become a plant. Translated into more than 40 languages, it earned Han Kang the Man Booker International Prize in 2016.
A novel about two people who are gradually losing their senses — a woman her language, a man his sight — and find each other in that shared vulnerability. A meditation on the fragility of the body and of communication.
A polyphonic novel about the Gwangju Uprising of May 1980, tracing the fates of victims, survivors, and perpetrators. Considered her most politically charged and harrowing work.
A poetic meditation on the color white, grief, and an older sister who died two hours after birth. A hybrid text blending prose and poetic fragments, shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize 2018.
A novel about the intergenerational transmission of memory surrounding the Jeju massacre (1948). Han Kang continues her exploration of political violence and the ghosts of Korean history.
Anecdotes
Han Kang was born in Gwangju on November 27, 1970, a city that experienced a democratic uprising in May 1980, brutally suppressed by the South Korean army. As a child living in Seoul, she discovered in her father's books harrowing photographs of the massacre's victims — bodies, anonymous faces. These images haunted her throughout her life and became the foundation of her novel 'Human Acts' (2014).
The idea for 'The Vegetarian' (2007) took root after Han Kang read a line by Korean poet Yi Sang: “I believe that humans should be plants.” She spent years meditating on the image of a human body that would deny itself to become a plant. This novel, translated into English by Deborah Smith, earned her the Man Booker International Prize in 2016 — a first for a Korean author.
Han Kang is the daughter of Han Seung-won, one of South Korea's most respected novelists. Growing up in a household where books and writers were a constant presence naturally drew her toward literature, but she forged a radically personal style — poetic, dark, focused on the body and inner pain — very different from her father's.
In October 2024, Han Kang learned by phone that she had just received the Nobel Prize in Literature while she was working with her son. She thus became the first Korean woman and the first Asian female author to receive this distinction. The Swedish Academy praised “her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.”
Han Kang has shared in several interviews that she writes her first drafts by hand, in notebooks, before transcribing them on a computer. This physical gesture keeps her in touch with her characters' emotions. This relationship with the body — at once subject, instrument, and metaphor — runs through her entire work, from the woman who yearns to transform into a plant to the soul of a dead boy wandering among the living.
Primary Sources
Before my wife became a vegetarian, I had always considered her a perfectly ordinary woman. She was neither particularly beautiful nor ugly, neither very intelligent nor stupid, and her views had nothing remarkable about them.
You were searching for your friend's face among the bodies laid out in the gymnasium turned morgue. Candles burned at either end of the room. You were fifteen years old and you did not yet know what you were seeing.
The swaddling cloth. White. The tiny newborn gown. White. The salt. White. The snow. White. The moon. White. The rice. White. The pear blossoms. White. The blank page. White.
I wanted to understand how human beings can inflict such suffering on other human beings. And whether such understanding was even possible. It is from this question that my books were born.
The Nobel Prize in Literature 2024 is awarded to Han Kang for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.
Key Places
Han Kang's birthplace and the site of the May 1980 democratic uprising. The images of the massacre, discovered in her father's books, form the founding trauma at the heart of her novel 'Human Acts'.
The capital where Han Kang grew up after her family relocated, where she studied Korean literature at Yonsei University, and where she has lived and worked throughout her career.
One of South Korea's most prestigious universities, where Han Kang studied Korean literature and encountered the foundational texts that continue to shape her writing.
The setting of her novel 'We Do Not Part' (2021), which explores memories of the 1948 massacre. Han Kang conducted extensive research on the island to document the traces of this long-suppressed collective trauma.
The city where Han Kang received the Nobel Prize in Literature in December 2024, at a ceremony that brought Korean literature to the attention of the entire world.
