Gwangju May 18 Tragedy Comforts Holocaust Survivors... K-Literature Soothes Wounds Around the World [Real K-Wave]

Foreign Coverage Soars to 32.4% After Han Kang's Nobel Prize
Germany and Mexico Focus on Historical Reckoning, Britain on Literary Innovation
"Urgent Need for Systematic Export Support Beyond Visual Media"

Han Kang, writer, Yonhap News

Korean literature has cast off the inherent shackle of being a marginal language and has entered the center of world literature. Author Han Kang's Nobel Prize in Literature has served as a decisive turning point. Rather than ending as a one-off curiosity, it has spread into serious intellectual reading across the globe.

Big data analysis by the Korea Culture & Information Service proves this with objective figures. Immediately after the Nobel Prize announcement, the share of foreign media coverage related to Korean literature jumped from 1.2% in the previous quarter to 32.4%, an increase of more than 30 percentage points. Major outlets focused on the narrative structures of representative works such as "The Vegetarian" and "Human Acts." They simultaneously reported that the fact she is the first Asian woman laureate has broken the old order of world literary history and opened up a new horizon.

Even more striking is the emergence of a universal sense of empathy grounded in painful history. Media in various countries have received Korea's specific regional wounds by connecting them with their own historical trajectories. Outlets in Germany and Mexico analyzed Han Kang's works by translating them into the universal human task of confronting state violence and settling past wrongs. In particular, German media, using their own historical traumas such as the Holocaust as a medium, expressed deep empathy for the tragedy of the Gwangju Democratization Movement depicted in "Human Acts." The pain of a specific region has thus evolved into a weighty narrative that transcends language to console the wounds of people around the world.

On the afternoon of the 10th, the "2024 World Nobel Literature Festival" was held at Seoul Library to celebrate Han Kang's Nobel Prize in Literature. La Ppeutti Peurangseu Kwareutet is performing a celebratory jazz concert. Photo by Heo Yeonghan

By contrast, media in Japan and China focused on Han Kang's literary achievement as an Asian woman writer. They attached historical significance to the feat of an Asian woman in a Western, male-centered literary world. British media, on the other hand, drew attention to the power of translation and to literary innovation itself, such as her experimental prose. They highly valued the structural completeness of the texts that broke through the language barrier.

Han Kang's award is not the end of Korean literature but a new starting point. An official at the Korea Culture & Information Service stressed, "It is time to firmly support the external reach of the Korean Wave, which visual media have built, with the deeply rooted foundation of the printed word," adding, "The government and related institutions should use the momentum from this award to expand translation infrastructure and systematically support the overseas advancement of a wide range of writers."