A backlash against the Nobel prize awarding
Published: 14 Oct. 2024, 20:03
Choi Hyeon-chul
The author is an editorial writer of the JoongAng Ilbo.
MinumsaTV, a YouTube channel of the publishing company Minumsa, is a popular account with over 250,000 subscribers. As expected from a publishing house, three employees of the overseas literature team did a live broadcast as they waited for the announcement of this year’s winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature on the evening of Oct. 10. All the top candidates they introduced were foreign authors.
At 8 p.m., when the winner was announced in Sweden, Han Kang and South Korea were mentioned in the statement. The people in the broadcast were awestruck. “Han Kang? Han … Kang?” The trio covered their mouths with their hands and stood frozen for about five seconds and then broke into applause and cheers. Some staff members shed tears. They seemed more shocked than excited. “When we talked about the Nobel Prize for Literature, we often used the term ‘contemporary literature in other countries’, and I have never realized that it would be ours,” said one of them.
The nation’s reaction to this unexpected joyful news was similar — a brief pause of surprise and long cheers. By Saturday evening, 300,000 copies of Han’s books were sold in just two days at three major bookstores, starting a “Han Kang Syndrome.” Long lines formed in front of cash registers of Kyobo Bookstore, and shelves were emptied as soon as they were stocked.
Newspapers and broadcasts were covered with stories about the author. Group chats were also busy talking about her. The “miracle of Han Kang” was as refreshing as a glass of cold water to many Koreans fatigued by grim news.
But not everyone was on the same page. The comment sections of media outlets quickly became hotbeds of ideological debate. Anger at her winning the prize filled the comment sections, followed by a few rebuttals. The outrage stems from the fact that her works narrated the Jeju uprising on April 3, 1948 and the May 18, 1980 Democracy Movement in Gwangju from the perspective of the victims. There seemed to be no way to acknowledge or celebrate the fact that “distorted works from a biased sense of history” had won the world’s biggest literary prize.
Their outrage was also directed at the Nobel Committee for Literature, which had chosen her and her works. “They probably placed manuscripts in front of a fan and decided which one to give the prize to based on the locations of where the papers had fallen,” one critic complained, using a sarcastic phrase often used in Korea in the 1980s. The committee awarded the prize to Han for her “intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life,” and online commentators seemed to have intensified the trauma and turned it into a weapon of hate.
Their anger reminded me of “The Vegetarian,” which won Han the International Booker Prize, formerly known as the Man Booker International Prize. It is a serialized portrayal from three detailed perspectives of how the main character, Yeong-hye, who refuses to eat meat because of a traumatic dream, is persecuted by people and eventually slips into psychosis. Yeong-hye is simply not attracted to meat, but people call her “abnormal” and label her a “vegetarian,” instead of trying to understand her.
“Not many people try to understand other people’s habits and cultures as much as they think,” wrote critic Heo Yun-jin in a commentary at the end of the novel’s first edition. “In such cases, letting him or her move naturally is one of the ways to understand.”
Some may feel uncomfortable with the idea of revisiting history from the perspective of victims. Not everyone is obligated to celebrate when someone wins a grand prize. But maybe we don’t have to throw cold water at someone else’s big celebration.
As a giant wave of warm congratulations and a stubborn refusal to accept them were facing each other, another piece of news arrived. Han’s father, the renowned novelist Han Seung-won, shared that his daughter said, “As wars are still fiercely happening and deaths are being carried out day by day, why should we have a feast and hold a joyful press conference?”
The author’s sensitivity to the wounds and traumas suffered by individuals and groups in historical events has never wavered even during the most glorious moments. Her comments were also stinging punches at a world that has been silent on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s merciless attacks on civilians in the name of retaliating against Hamas.
Han Kang is expected to accept the award at the Nobel Prize ceremony in Stockholm on Dec. 10 and publicly share her thoughts. Only she knows if she will mention the ongoing wars. If she mentions them as a Nobel Prize winner, it will surely to have a strong impact. I am already looking forward to December.
Translation by the Korea JoongAng Daily staff.
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
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