In Nobel Lecture, Childhood Poetry Revealed… Reflections on Her Work in Korean,
Han Kang, the 2024 Nobel Literature Prize winner, holds a press conference at the Nobel Museum in Stockholm, Sweden, on the 6th (local time). ⓒ Reuters/Yonhap News, ‘[Dailyan = Reporter Jo In-young] “From my first novel to the most recent, perhaps the deepest layer of all my questions has always been directed towards love.”‘,
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, ‘Novelist Han Kang, on the 7th (local time) at the Swedish Academy, delivered a lecture reflecting on her literary world in Korean by revealing the contents of a poem she wrote when she was eight years old.’,
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, ‘According to Yonhap News, she began her lecture titled “Light and Thread” by saying, “While cleaning out a storage space for a move last January, I came across an old shoe box.”‘,
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, “She continued, saying she found papers labeled as a ‘collection of poems,’ bundled with eight poems along with diaries, and she shared two stanzas.”,
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, ‘”Where does love exist? / It’s in my heart, beating vigorously. // What is love? / It’s the golden thread that connects our hearts.”‘,
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, “Han Kang went on to explain the background and the emotions she experienced while writing her novels ‘The Vegetarian’, ‘The Wind Blows, Go’, ‘Greek Lessons’, ‘Human Acts’, and ‘No Goodbye’.”,
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, ‘She explained, “There is a special allure in writing novels,” and “Long novels, taking anywhere from at least a year to up to seven years, occupy significant periods of my personal life.”‘,
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, ‘Additionally, she mentioned, “Each time I write a novel, I live within it, enduring the questions, and it’s when I reach the end of those questions that I complete the novel.”‘,
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, ‘Specifically discussing ‘Human Acts’, which deals with victims of the May 18 Gwangju Democratization Movement, Han disclosed, “I was nine years old when the massacre happened there,” and “When I secretly read the ‘Gwangju Photo Album’ shelved backward, I was twelve.”‘,
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, ‘She stated, “When I call a time and place where human cruelty and dignity coexisted in extreme forms ‘Gwangju’, I found during the writing of this book that Gwangju no longer refers to just one city but has become a common noun.”‘,
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, ‘Han shared, “Why is the world so violent and painful? At the same time, how is it so beautiful? The tension and internal struggles between these two questions have long been the driving force behind my writing.”‘,
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, ‘However, she said, “I began to question this thought two or three years ago,” adding, “From my first novel to the most recent, perhaps the deepest layer of all my questions has always been directed towards love. Could it have been the most enduring and fundamental undertone of my life?”‘