S. Korean Han Kang Wins Nobel Prize in Literature
South Korean author Han Kang has been awarded the Nobel Prize in literature, becoming the first Asian woman and the first writer from South Korea to win the prize.
The Nobel committee said her work "confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life."
Han has won a number of awards in South Korea and in Europe, and has found success with novels including The Vegetarian and Human Acts.
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," Olsson said.
Han is just the second South Korean national to win a Nobel Prize of any sort. Former President Kim Dae-jung won the peace prize in 2000 for his efforts to restore democracy in South Korea during the country's previous military rule and improve relations with North Korea.
Speaking to the Swedish Academy by phone, Han said she had just finished having dinner with her son at home in Seoul when she got a call with the news.
She said she was both "honored" and surprised to become South Korea's first Nobel literature laureate.
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 like director Bong Joon-ho's Oscar-winning Parasite, the Netflix drama Squid Game and the worldwide fame of K-pop groups like BTS and Blackpink.
Han, who is 53, won the International Booker Prize in 2016 for The Vegetarian, an unsettling novel in which a woman's decision to stop eating meat has devastating consequences.
She made her publishing debut as a poet in 1993; her first short story collection was published the following year and her first novel, Black Deer, in 1998.
The literature prize has long faced criticism that it is too focused on European and North American writers.
It has also been male-dominated, with just 17 women among its 119 laureates until this year's award.
