South Korean novelist Han Kang, the first Korean to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, expressed her reaction to the award as “truly astonishing and an honor.”
On Thursday, the Swedish Academy announced Han Kang as the recipient of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature. During a phone call with Mats Malm, the Academy’s permanent secretary, she shared her surprise and gratitude.
“I want to enjoy tea with my son and celebrate quietly,” Han said.
Malm recounted that when he called her, she had just finished dinner with her son, and she had no idea such an event would occur.
During the award presentation, Anders Olsson, chair of the Nobel Prize in Literature committee, praised Han’s innovative literary voice. “She has a unique awareness of the connections between body and soul, the living and the dead,” Olsson said. “In a poetic and experimental style, she has become an innovator in contemporary prose.”
This marks the second time a Korean has received a Nobel Prize. The first was former President Kim Dae Jung, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000.
