While Han Kang’s victory was celebrated as a crowning cultural achievement for her country, her work also represents a form of rebellion against its culture.
The awarding of the Nobel Prize in Literature to Han Kang on Thursday stands as yet another validation of the outsize soft power of the South Korean cultural juggernaut.
Ms. Han is both the first South Korean and the first Asian woman to win the Nobel, the world’s most prestigious literary prize, in its 123-year history. Her achievement follows Bong Joon Ho’s best-picture Oscar for “Parasite” in 2020, as well as the broad popular success of television shows like Netflix’s “Squid Game” and K-pop acts like BTS and Blackpink.
The win by Ms. Han, who is best known outside her home country for “The Vegetarian,” is fitting at a time when female novelists and poets from South Korea have flourished, particularly in translation, sending a wave of works into the hands of international readers.
But while her victory was widely celebrated as a crowning cultural achievement for South Korea, what Ms. Han and these female writers represent is a form of rebellion against South Korean culture, which remains deeply patriarchal and often misogynistic.
Only one of the 10 heads of the country’s Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism has been a woman since it assumed its current name in 2008. Until Ms. Han’s triumph, South Korea’s male-dominated literary critics’ circles had long championed the poet Ko Un as the country’s most likely and deserving Nobel candidate. Before allegations of sexual abuse surfaced against him, local reporters would gather in front of his home when the Nobel announcement was imminent. Ms. Han never drew such crowds.
