Conference Agenda
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Session Overview |
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Special Session III: Korean Literature, World Literature, and Glocal Publishing: Celebrating Han Kang's Nobel Prize Award
2025 ICLA SPECIAL SESSION 3 - YouTube Special Session III: Korean Literature, World Literature, and Glocal Publishing: Celebrating Han Kang's Nobel Prize Award
Chair: KWAK Hyo Hwan, Ph.D. (Poet, Former President of Literature Translation Institute of Korea)
Speakers:
1. KWAK Hyo Hwan, Ph.D. (Poet, Former President of Literature Translation Institute of Korea) “From 'Globalization of Korean Literature' to 'Korean Literature as World Literature' - The Future of Korean Literature After Han Kang Wins Nobel Prize” Author Han Kang has been selected as the winner of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature. It is a sudden blessing that has come less than 10 years since The Vegetarian was published in the UK in 2015 and won the Booker International Prize the following year, drawing attention from the world of literature. As stated in the reason for selection by the Swedish Academy, Han Kang’s work “achieved powerful poetic prose that confronts historical trauma and reveals the fragility of human life,” the long and extensive world of Han Kang’s works was evaluated. In The Vegetarian, she captivatingly portrayed the violence of norms and customs that bind the family and society through the heroine who refuses to eat meat and tries to become a tree, and in The Boy Comes and We Don’t Say Goodbye, she excelled in dealing with the vulnerability of individuals who were sacrificed in the horrific tragedies caused by great power through the May 18 Gwangju Democratization Movement and the Jeju April 3 Incident, thereby achieving even deeper literary achievements. However, considering that the Nobel Prize in Literature is more of an award for merit that encompasses the author’s entire literary world and literary life rather than a prize for a work, this award cannot be anything but a surprising event. This Nobel Prize in Literature is not only an award for author Han Kang, but also an award for Korean literature and translation. The aspiration of Korean literature in the periphery to move to the center has been fulfilled by going beyond ‘introducing Korean literature overseas’ and ‘globalizing Korean literature’ to ‘Korean literature as world literature’ and ‘Korean literature read together by people around the world’. Now, Korean literature has opened a path for communication without time difference by being simultaneous with world literature, and has reached a turning point where it has transitioned from being a receiver of world literature to a sender. The power of translation, which has enabled readers around the world to read Korean literature without language and cultural barriers, has played an absolute role in this. And the Korean Literature Translation Institute and Daesan Cultural Foundation have made a great contribution to supporting this for a long time and systematically. Now, after receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature, it is time to calmly look at the process and meaning of receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature and what Korean literature should do. This is because the Nobel Prize in Literature is an important gateway that Korean literature must pass through, not a goal. Therefore, in this lecture, we will examine the process of Korean literature advancing to world literature, the role and achievements of translation at its core, Korean literary works that have attracted attention in the world literary community, and what Korean literature needs to prepare as world literature.
2. KIM Chunsik (Dongguk U) “Nobel Prize in Literature, and After” This essay critically reflects on the global significance of Korean literature in the wake of Han Kang’s Nobel Prize in Literature. Drawing on the author’s personal experiences as a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley (2004) and a participant in an academic conference in India (2009), the paper explores the tension between center and periphery as a persistent framework in literary and cultural discourse. These episodes underscore how Korean literature has historically occupied a marginal position in global literary hierarchies, yet how such marginality also fosters critical reflections on identity, representation, and power. The essay highlights the Swedish Academy’s appraisal of Human Acts as revealing “historical trauma and the fragility of human life,” arguing that this speaks not only to Han Kang’s literary sensibility but also to the core concerns of contemporary Korean literature. Using the concept of the “politics of mourning,” as theorized by Judith Butler, the author contends that Korean literature engages in an ethical task: to retrieve the voices of the dead and reframe trauma as a shared human condition. Literature thereby becomes a medium that bridges the abyss between human dignity and violence, past suffering and present vulnerability. Ultimately, the author rejects the triumphalist view that Han Kang’s award marks Korean literature’s arrival at the “center” of world literature. Instead, it affirms a longer, ethical trajectory in which Korean literature, shaped by historical wounds and peripheral positions, has always already been global. The essay argues that the true value of Korean literature lies not in global market expansion, but in its sustained engagement with planetary concerns violence, mourning, and coexistence through ethical and imaginative inquiry
3. CHO Hyung-yup (Korea U) “Significance of Han Kang's Nobel Prize in Literature and Her Status in World Literature History”
1. The significance of Han Kang's Nobel Prize in Literature Han Kang's Nobel Prize in Literature can be seen as a great feat for the Republic of Korea, achieved through the combination of four factors: Han Kang's creative ability, the power of Korean literature that made it possible, the translator's ability, and institutional support from the government and the private sector. 2. Han Kang's literary achievements Han Kang's literary achievements are summarized in the expression “powerful poetic prose that confronts historical trauma and reveals the fragility of human life” that the Swedish Academy announced as the reason for her selection when it announced her winning the Nobel Prize in Literature on October 10, 2024. If I were to interpret this reason for her selection in my own way, I would say that “confronting historical trauma” is a “realistic thematic consciousness,” “revealing the fragility of human life” is a “modernist formal experiment,” and “powerful poetic prose” is an “organic style experiment.” So I think that author Han Kang's creative ability is obtained by successfully fusing these three things that are difficult to coexist. In other words, author Han Kang's literary achievements were obtained by independently fusing realistic thematic consciousness such as feminism, ecology, and historical trauma with modernistic formal experiments such as fantasy, aesthetics, composition, and point of view. In fact, realism and modernism are heterogeneous and conflicting literary trends that are difficult to coexist with. I think that the stylistic experiment called 'poetic prose' played a decisive role in fusing these two poles. 3. Han Kang's status in Korean and world literary history So I think that the core characteristic of Han Kang's literature is that he exquisitely fused these three items by putting ‘realistic thematic consciousness’ and ‘modernistic formal experiments’ in a crucible and using the catalyst called ‘organic stylistic experiments.’ Another important point here is that the methodology of stylistic experimentation based on ‘physical sensibility and organic imagination’ is partly an inheritance of the tradition of romanticism and symbolism accepted from Western literature, but also partly an inheritance of our country’s ‘traditional aesthetics’, ‘Korean aesthetics’ and ‘shamanistic native culture’. In the end, Han Kang can be evaluated as having creatively developed a dimension by accepting the three contradictory and conflicting literary lineages of modern Korean literature, realism, modernism, romanticism, and symbolism, which were influenced by world literature, while absorbing Korea’s traditional aesthetics and native culture and creatively fusing them. Therefore, I think that the status of Han Kang’s works in the history of Korean literature and world literature is that he returns the newly developed high-level achievements to Korean literature and world literature, which provided him with literary nutrients.
Discussants:
CHO Hyungrae (Dongguk U) JEONG Gi-Seok (Dongguk U) KIM Eun-seok (Dongguk U)
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| Session Abstract | ||
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Han Kang’s Nobel Triumph: Korean Literature’s Global Leap and the Rise of Glocal Publishing
Equally pivotal is the role of glocal publishing in Han Kang’s ascent. The shift from supply-driven to demand-driven translation and publishing, especially through third-generation translators like Deborah Smith and Anton Hur, has enabled Korean literature to thrive abroad. The roundtable highlighted how strategic translation, cultural compatibility, and institutional support—such as from the Literature Translation Institute of Korea and Daesan Foundation—have created a sustainable ecosystem for Korean literature’s global dissemination. Yet, challenges remain: the need for deeper literary infrastructure, improved domestic readership, and balanced translation practices that preserve Korean literary identity while appealing to global audiences. Han Kang’s Nobel win is not just a personal achievement but a milestone in Korea’s literary globalization, urging continued investment in both local depth and international reach. | ||
| External Resource: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6y11-NN5InY&t=2011s | ||
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ID: 1825
/ Special Session III: 1
Special Sessions Keywords: Nobel Prize in literature, Korean literature, world literature After the Nobel Prize in Literature: Korean Literature and World Literature Dongguk University Let me begin with a reflection that might seem like a passing thought—based on a very personal experience. In 2004, I was a visiting scholar at the Center for Korean Studies at UC Berkeley, not far from San Francisco, sharing a small research space with other international scholars. Thanks to the generosity of Professor Claire Yu, who was then the director of the Korean Studies Center, I occasionally had the opportunity to teach Korean literature to students. Most of them were majoring in East Asian comparative cultures and had completed an intermediate level of Korean. Although they could understand some Korean, they knew almost nothing about Korean literature. Teaching Korean fiction to such students in the original language was both unfamiliar and somewhat uncomfortable for me. From the students’ perspective, they were listening to a “native lecture” on Korean literature. But from my own position—as a scholar of Korean literature attending lectures in English on literary theory and comparative literature in the United States—it all felt somewhat discordant and ironic. Frankly, I had to constantly hear people ask, “Why would a person with a Ph.D. in Korean literature come all the way to America?” And since my English was poor, I was always inwardly intimidated, often feeling a sense of defeat, like a young person from a colonial periphery. In 2004, although the Korean Wave (Hallyu) had just begun to spread among Asian Americans in the U.S., for most white Americans, Korea was still an unknown and “strange” country. I was just a nameless foreigner from such a place. Bibliography
TBA
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