Hangang "Cried in Taxi Listening to AKMU Song"... Reveals Music Listened to While Writing

Interview After Writing 'I Do Not Say Goodbye' 3 Years Ago

Novelist Han Kang has attracted attention for the playlist she released after publishing her novel "I Do Not Part" three years ago, following her receipt of the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Novelist Han Kang, Nobel Prize in Literature Winner [Photo by Changbi]

At the time, Han appeared in a video titled "[Playlist] Novelist Han Kang's Unexpected Playlist: Songs That Stayed Close Like Jeju" uploaded on the YouTube channel "Munhakdongne," where she introduced the music she enjoyed listening to while writing "I Do Not Part." She described the novel as "a story about profound love, a story about crossing from death to life, and also a story about lighting a candle under the sea." She added, "After finishing the first draft, I took a taxi, and AKMU's song 'How Can I Love the Heartbreak, You're the One I Love' was playing. The lyrics 'How can I... you... After that, waiting for our love as deep as the sea to dry up must be parting' struck me with a completely different meaning, and I remember shedding tears in the taxi like someone with a story," she laughed.

Han, who said she "usually listens to a lot of music," revealed that while writing this novel, which captures the tragedy of Jeju 4·3 through the perspectives of three women, she listened frequently to Jo Dong-ik's "Lullaby," Kim Kwang-seok's "My Song," Andra Day's "Rise Up," and Arvo P?rt's "Mirror in the Mirror." In particular, she introduced Kim Kwang-seok's "My Song," mentioning, "The lyrics 'Even if I shake and fall, as long as there is a last drop of water in this world, I will drink and sing' are especially beautiful." When introducing Andra Day's "Rise Up," she said, "There is a lyric that says 'I will get up a thousand times.' I wrote numbers from 1 to 1000 on a large sheet of paper and erased each day, thinking 'The book will come out within 1000 days,' and in fact, the book was published before the 1000th day."

With "I Do Not Part," Han won the French M?dicis Foreign Literature Prize last year and the French ?mile Guimet Asian Literature Prize this past February.

Meanwhile, the Swedish Academy announced on the 10th (local time) that Han Kang was selected as this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. They stated, "Han Kang's work is a powerful poetic prose that confronts historical trauma and exposes the fragility of human life." Accordingly, Han Kang became the first Asian woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.