Korean author Han Kang awarded 2024 Nobel Prize for Literature

Korean author Han Kang won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature, it was announced Thursday.

Author Han Kang during last year's press conference about her book "I Do Not Bid Farewell" (2021) which won the Prix Medicis. [NEWS1]

Korean author Han Kang won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature, the Swedish Academy announced Thursday.

The committee praised her work for its “intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.”

Han, best known for "The Vegetarian" (2007), is the first Korean to win a Nobel Prize in literature and the second Korean to win a Nobel Prize after late President Kim Dae-jung, who was recognized for his efforts to improve relations with North Korea with a Nobel Peace Prize in 2000.

She follows last year’s winner, Norwegian author and dramatist Jon Fosse.

The 2024 Nobel Prizes will be announced through Oct. 14. Winners of the Nobel Prize receive a medal, a certificate and 11 million Swedish krona ($1.1 million).

Han was born in 1970 in the southern city of Gwangju and graduated from the Department of Korean Literature at Yonsei University. She made her literary debut in 1993 with the poem "Winter of Seoul" (translated) and wrote her first novel, "The Red Anchor" (translated) in 1994.

Catapulting to domestic fame in the 2000s, she started receiving global acclaim in 2016 with the International Booker Prize for her novel, "The Vegetarian."

Han's novel "I Do Not Bid Farewell" (2021) won the Prix Medicis award last year after being shortlisted for the award's foreign-language category, becoming the first Korean author to win the award.

She was nominated for the prize in 2017 with "Greek Lessons" (2011) but did not win.

BY LEE JIAN, YOON SO-YEON [lee.jian@joongang.co.kr]