'Nobel Week' Held in Stockholm, Sweden
First Official Press Conference After Award
Representative Work 'Sonyeoni Onda' Addresses Gwangju Democratization Movement
Han Kang, the first Asian woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, will participate in official events such as a press conference and a lecture ahead of the award ceremony.
On the 6th at 9 PM (Korean time), Han will hold her first official press conference since receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature. This is part of the "Nobel Week" event held from the 6th to the 12th in Stockholm, Sweden. A total of 11 Nobel laureates from five fields including Literature, Physiology, Physics, Chemistry, and Economics will attend this event. The press conference on this day is expected to be the first occasion where Han, who had no other external schedules except for the 18th PonyJeong Innovation Award ceremony last October, will share her thoughts on winning the prize.
After the press conference, Han will visit the Nobel Museum to participate in an event donating her works. She will also leave her autograph on the chair in the museum restaurant, which serves as a guestbook for Nobel laureates. Later, at 1 AM on the 8th, she will give a one-hour lecture in Korean at the Swedish Academy reflecting on her literary world. This lecture is accessible only to pre-invited guests but will be broadcast live on the Nobel Committee’s YouTube channel. Around midnight on the 11th, the highlight of Nobel Week, the award ceremony, will take place. Han is scheduled to conclude her official schedule with a dialogue at 3 AM on the 13th at the Royal Theatre with Yukiko Duke, a Swedish translator and journalist.
Meanwhile, some netizens are showing interest in whether Han will be asked about the martial law situation during the press conference and what her response might be. This is because her representative work, Sonyeoni Onda (The Boy is Coming), is set against the backdrop of the democratization movement that took place in Gwangju in May 1980. The Gwangju Democratization Movement occurred during the period of emergency martial law declared on October 26, 1979, and lasted until January 24, 1981.
Earlier, President Yoon Suk-yeol declared martial law through an emergency national address around 10:28 PM on the 3rd. Subsequently, a motion to lift the emergency martial law was passed in the plenary session, and the government officially lifted the martial law at 4:30 AM on the 4th after a cabinet meeting. Currently, the six opposition parties including the Democratic Party have submitted an impeachment motion against President Yoon, with a vote scheduled for 7 PM on the 7th.
© The Asia Business Daily(www.asiae.co.kr). All rights reserved.
