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Yonsei University to host Yonsei Nobel Week in celebration of author Han Kang

Published: 19 Nov. 2025, 10:56 Updated: 19 Nov. 2025, 13:39

LEE TAE-HEE
[email protected]

Banners celebrating author Han Kang winning the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature hang around the Yonsei University campus, Han's alma mater, on Oct. 11, 2024. [NEWS1]

Yonsei University announced Wednesday that it will host Yonsei Nobel Week from Dec. 1 to 11, marking the first anniversary of alum Han Kang’s Nobel Prize win.

Yonsei Nobel Week is scheduled to hold various events under the theme of whether the past can help the present — a question that novelist Han Kang has been asking through her works — at the university's Sinchon campus in Seodaemun District, western Seoul.

Han won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature, becoming the first Korean to win the honor and the second Korean to win a Nobel Prize after late President Kim Dae-jung's Nobel Peace Prize win in 2000. Han enrolled in Yonsei University's Department of Korean Literature in 1989, graduating with a bachelor's degree in 1993.

Yonsei Nobel Week will kick off on Dec. 1 with an exhibition of Han's literary works and unveil a plaque of the novelist's poetry that will be installed on campus.

A poster for the 2025 Yonsei Nobel Week [YONSEI UNIVERSITY]

The event will also look into poet Yoon Dong-ju, an alum of Yonsei University, through a symposium on Dec. 5 that discusses his works, how they have been translated and his biography.

Conferences on Dec. 11 will delve into how Han's works have been translated into various languages and how they have been received and interpreted in western countries.

"Through this year’s Yonsei Nobel Week, which welcomes students, researchers, literary figures and the public both at home and abroad to participate, we hope to shed new light on the significance of author Han Kang’s Nobel Prize in Literature win and share with the world the new possibilities created by literature, memory and solidarity," said a spokesperson for the Yonsei Nobel Week Organizing Committee.

BY LEE TAE-HEE [[email protected]]