I think it’s fair to say that few people expected Han Kang to win this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature. Based on its recent turn toward rectifying both geographic and gender imbalances, the Academy was widely expected to select a female Asian laureate, but the frontrunner was China’s Can Xue. Han was on the oddsmakers’ lists, but of the Korean candidates mentioned, the seventy-year-old poet Kim Hyesoon seemed a more likely choice. (One Nobel prediction blog dismissed Han’s chances, stating, “she is on the younger side, but will most likely be considered a serious contender in the next seven or eight years.”) Han is the first Korean winner, the first female Asian laureate in literature, and the fifth-youngest recipient of the literature prize; and once we were over our surprise, those of us who have read and admired Han could delight in her selection and consider what it might mean for the author, and Korean literary culture in general, in the international literary world.

    Her relative youth notwithstanding, Han fits the conventional Nobel profile well. Although her work first appeared in English barely a decade ago, she published her first short story collection in 1995 and has been a major literary figure in her country for over twenty-five years. She has won multiple major international prizes, including the (frequent Nobel-predictor) Man Booker International Prize and Prix Médicis étranger, and has been translated into over thirty languages. And with her sensitivity to the human element of historical events, her work displays the “idealistic tendency” stipulated in Alfred Nobel’s will. Indeed, Han declined to hold a press conference or otherwise celebrate her Nobel on the grounds that celebration was inappropriate during the wars in Ukraine and Palestine.

    This compassion and empathy for the suffering of others informs Han’s work. The Swedish Academy’s citation commended “her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.” In deploying that lyrical style to expose the governmental brutality (and subsequent coverups) at the heart of Human Acts and We Do Not Part, Han reveals not only the harsh truth of these atrocities but the universality of the suffering they perpetuated. And her delicate portrayals of intimate personal relationships in Greek Lessons and The White Book provide further evidence of the necessity of compassion and love in the face of unbearable loss.

    In the Anglophone world, Han is probably best known for her first book in English translation, the subversive and unsettling The Vegetarian. The tale of an enigmatic woman who spurns her husband to embrace a plant-based diet, the novel was variously interpreted as a critique of Korean society, a parable of conformity, and a manifesto for female agency. A financial and critical success, winning the 2016 Man Booker International Prize and landing on best-seller lists, The Vegetarian paved the way for Han’s subsequent English-language publications and, ultimately, the Nobel. Yet that book appeared in English eight years after its original Korean publication, and only thanks to the passion and persistence of translator Deborah Smith. (Other countries have been quicker to pick up some of Han’s other works—We Do Not Part, for example, forthcoming in English in 2025, appeared in French in August 2023 with the title Impossibles Adieux.)

    In the ten years since Han’s debut in English, Korean literature’s international profile has greatly increased. Support from LTI Korea and other granting agencies has facilitated translations of Han and many other South Korean writers, as well as publisher trips and author appearances at book fairs and festivals, all of which have contributed immensely to Korean literature’s expansion in the international market. The Anglophone media has been quick to link this growth to the success of BTS and other figures of K-Pop, film, and television, but the true drivers are the many dedicated literary translators from Korean. With their fervent promotion of and advocacy for South Korean writers, this new generation of translators performs an invaluable service as mediators, interpreting not only the texts but the contexts and essences of these books. Translators of contemporary Korean literature—including Janet Hong, Soje, Sora Kim-Russell, and Anton Hur, among others—are powering not only the increasing number of titles, but also the corresponding expansion of genres and topics, such as the fantastic universe of Bora Chung and the gritty gay cityscapes of Sang Young Park. Translation into English is vital for true international success: it is the universal language of publishing, and books must be available in English for their fullest dissemination.

    Ten short years after her own work made that leap, Han Kang now joins the Nobel pantheon. Literary prizes are arbitrary and deeply flawed, and the Nobel is no exception; many great writers were never recognized, while other laureates have (mercifully, in some cases) faded into obscurity. The effect of the prize on Han’s reception and future production remains to be seen. One of the most significant parts of Han’s Nobel, though, is its timing. Most previous laureates have been recognized near or at the end of their productivity, but Han’s award comes at the probable midpoint of hers. Even with the lag between original publication and availability of translations, we may have another twenty-five years of Han’s work to look forward to with the near-guarantee of its swift availability—and promotion—in English.

    Han Kang’s anointment as laureate confirms her status as an international writer and ensures that her future work will be published, translated, reviewed, discussed, and read around the world. It is an inflection point in both her own career and the international exposure of Korean literature, and a truly celebratory moment.

Susan Harris is the editorial director of Words Without Borders and the co-editor, with Ilya Kaminsky, of The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry.