“Korean author Han Kang, who became the first Korean and Asian woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, is gaining attention for having been blacklisted during the administration of Park Geun-hye. Literary critic and member of the Democratic Party Kang Yu-jeong congratulated Han Kang on winning the Nobel Prize on her Facebook page on the 10th, stating that ‘Han Kang was classified as a writer blacklisted in the culture industry in 2016.’
Kang pointed out that after writing the story of a boy who tragically lost his life during the May 18 Democratization Movement in ‘The Boy Comes,’ Han Kang was openly excluded from all forms of support and placed on the blacklist. Kang emphasized that ‘culture is an area that should not be meddled with by administration and politics.’
In the selection process for the Sejong Book (formerly an excellent book under the Ministry of Culture) by the Korea Publication Culture Industry Promotion Agency in 2014, controversy arose when Han Kang’s book ‘The Boy Comes’ was excluded. According to a report by Hankyoreh at the time, a person related to the agency testified that many books containing keywords such as May 18, North Korea, Kaesong Industrial Complex, Marxism, and politicians were excluded from the review. In particular, Han Kang’s ‘The Boy Comes’ was scrutinized for potentially problematic content, indicating that a form of prior censorship was taking place.
‘Soyoung’ by Han Kang was also targeted for exclusion from support for overseas cultural exchange events by the Literature Translation Institute of Korea. When Han Kang won the Man Booker International Prize in 2016 for her novel ‘The Vegetarian,’ an incident that became famous was that then-President Park Geun-hye did not send congratulations.
There was also controversy last year when Han Kang’s novel ‘The Vegetarian’ was designated by the Gyeonggi Provincial Office of Education as a ‘harmful sex education book for youth.’ According to a report submitted to the office by former Democratic Party lawmaker Kang Min-jung on the status of discarded sex education books, a total of 2,528 books were discarded from Gyeonggi Province school libraries for being ‘inappropriate sex education books for youth,’ including Han Kang’s ‘The Vegetarian.’
The current Superintendent of Education in Gyeonggi Province is Im Tae-hee, who served as a three-term lawmaker from the now-defunct Saenuri Party (previously known as the Liberty Korea Party) and was previously the chief of staff to former President Lee Myung-bak.”