Translator Park Ok-kyung "Received Request for Korean Translation of Introduction Speech"
Award Ceremony in Stockholm, Sweden on the 10th of Next Month
On December 10, author Han Kang will become the first Korean writer to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature in Stockholm, Sweden. According to Yonhap News on the 10th, the awards ceremony organizers have begun preparations to announce Han Kang's name in Korean.
Yonhap News reported this citing Park Ok-kyung, the translator who translated Han Kang's works into Swedish. Translator Park Ok-kyung stated, "I was asked to translate the final sentence of the recipient introduction speech into Korean for the awards ceremony." It is customary for the last sentence calling the recipient onto the stage to be conducted in the recipient's native language.
Han Kang also plans to deliver the official recipient lecture in Korean. Korean will thus appear throughout Stockholm, where the world's attention will be focused due to the Nobel Prize ceremony. Quietly upholding her literary convictions, she is expected to convey messages about Korean literature and Korean society to the world. This lecture will be translated into English and Swedish. Translator Park Ok-kyung, who translated Han Kang's works "I Will Not Part" and "White" into Swedish, along with her husband Anders Karlsson, a professor of Korean Studies at SOAS, University of London, will also handle the Swedish translation of this lecture.
The Nobel Prize in Literature Committee highly praised Han Kang's works for delicately addressing the tragedies of modern Korean history and social anguish. Among the works they particularly noted was "The Boy is Coming." "The Boy is Coming" is a novel set against the backdrop of the 1980 Gwangju Democratization Movement, and it has been evaluated as deeply resonant while sensitively dealing with the pain and wounds of that time.
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