Swedish Academy to introduce Han Kang in Korean during Nobel Prize award ceremony

Author Han Kang will be introduced at the Nobel Prize award ceremony on Dec. 10 in Korean, according to a local media outlet on Sunday.

Author Han Kang [JOINT PRESS COPRS]

Author Han Kang will be introduced at the Nobel Prize award ceremony on Dec. 10 in Korean, according to a local media outlet on Sunday.

Yonhap News Agency reported on Sunday that Park Ok-kyoung, the translator who translated Han’s works into Swedish, was asked to translate the final sentence of the introduction speech for Han into Korean.

Before presenting the award, a member of the Swedish Academy, the institution that selects the Nobel laureate in literature, will introduce Han in Swedish. Following tradition, the final sentence welcoming Han to the stage will be spoken in her native Korean.

This will be the first time the introduction speech will include the Korean language, as Han is the first Korean person to win the Nobel Prize in literature.

The Nobel Prize award ceremony is held each year on Dec. 10 at the Stockholm Concert Hall on the anniversary of Alfred Bernhard Nobel’s death. Five of the Nobel Prizes are awarded during the ceremony, excluding the Peace Prize, which is awarded at a separate ceremony in Oslo. While speeches for awards in other categories are often conducted in English, presentation of the Nobel Prize in literature by the Swedish Academy is typically conducted in Swedish and ends with a greeting in the laureate’s native language.

In previous ceremonies, the Swedish Academy introduced the 2022 Nobel laureate in literature, French writer Annie Ernaux, with “Chère Annie Ernaux.” In 2019, Austrian writer Peter Handke was welcomed to the stage with “Lieber Peter Handke."

Translators Park Ok-kyoung, left, and Anders Karlsson. [YONHAP]

The laureates do not give speeches at the ceremony but present separate lectures to share their reflections, which are often published as books.

According to the Swedish Academy’s website, Han will deliver her lecture in Korean on Dec. 7 in Stockholm with English and Swedish interpretations. Park and her husband, Professor Anders Karlsson from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), will collaborate on the Swedish translation.

The couple has been translating together since the 1990s and their works include the Swedish translations of Han’s “I Do Not Bid Farewell” (2021) and “The White Book” (2018).

"We are delighted to be part of this significant moment in the journey of the Nobel Prize in literature,” Park and Karlsson told Yonhap News Agency on Sunday.

"It is moving to just imagine a Nobel lecture being given in Korean and an introduction in Korean during the ceremony," they added.

BY HYEON YE-SEUL [yoon.seungjin@joongang.co.kr]