South Korean author Han Kang, this year’s Nobel laureate in literature, expressed her shock Friday over the martial law turmoil in her native country.
“I am following the news in a state of shock,” she said during a press conference held in Stockholm, Sweden, to commemorate her win.
“Like many South Koreans, I am deeply shocked over the last few days by the news of a martial law situation unfolding in 2024,” she said.
President Yoon Suk Yeol declared emergency martial law late Tuesday amid a political deadlock, throwing the nation into chaos. The crisis was swiftly resolved after the National Assembly voted to end the measure, with the Cabinet formally approving its repeal early Wednesday.
Han said she noticed a stark difference between now and previous instances of martial law, stressing how everyone can now watch everything unfold in real time through livestreams.
“The scenes I witnessed were astonishing,” she said. “There were people standing, trying to stop armored vehicles, and others with nothing but their bare hands attempting to hold back soldiers.
“I even saw people bidding farewell to the military as if they were their own children,” she added, referring to the troops withdrawing after the National Assembly voted to lift the measure.
Han described literature as the act of exploring the inner worlds of others while simultaneously delving into one’s own inner self.
Repeatedly engaging in this process helps cultivate “inner power,” she said. “When we have this power, we are able to make a judgment and decide what to do in certain situations that we have not foreseen.”
In October, the Swedish Academy announced Han as this year’s laureate, recognizing the 53-year-old “for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.”
“In her oeuvre, Han Kang confronts historical traumas and in each of her works exposes the fragility of human life,” the Nobel Committee said. “She has a unique awareness of the connections between body and soul, the living and the dead, and in a poetic and experimental style, has become an innovator in contemporary prose.”
Han is the first Asian female winner in literature and the second South Korean Nobel laureate after former President Kim Dae-jung, who was awarded the peace prize in 2000. (Yonhap)
