For the first time, the first Nobel Prize in Literature, the special documentary, Han Kang, will be broadcast live today (16th) under the spotlight martial law
Dec 16, 2024
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The emergency decree declared by President Yoon Suk Yeol on December 3, 2024, led to a large-scale civil uprising, and the National Assembly ultimately decided to impeach President Yoon on December 14. At the same time, Korean writer Han Kang received the Nobel Prize in Literature in Sweden for the first time. Han Kang's masterpieces 'Here Comes a Boy' and 'Doesn't Say Goodbye' feature stories of large-scale civilian massacres and surviving victims against the backdrop of emergency martial law in Gwangju in 1980 and Jeju in 1948, respectively. As a result, it is also historical that the two events that received global attention occurred at the same time.
The background of Han Kang's masterpiece 'The Boy Is Coming' is the 5.18 Democratic Uprising, in which many citizens were sacrificed due to the emergency martial law in 1980. Han Seung-won, the father of Han Kang, recalled bringing home a May 18 photo album that was secretly circulating at the time in 1980. Regarding the shock that the writer Han Kang, who was an elementary school student at the time, would have received, he guessed that "'It would always have remained like homework or trauma.'" In fact, in a lecture commemorating the Nobel Prize for Literature, Han said of his memory at the time, `The damaged faces (that I saw in the photo album) were engraved in me only as a fundamental question about humans.' Kim Gil-ja, the mother of Mun Jae-hak, a first-year student at Gwangju Sang High School, who was the real protagonist of 'The Boy Is Coming', shed tears, saying, `The writer told the world what we could not tell the country even if we fought for decades with a book.'
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Han became the first Asian woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, the youngest since Albert Camus. It can be said to be that unconventional, but some say that Han Kang's award will serve as an opportunity to renew the Nobel Prize for Literature. Tamima Anam, a judge at the 2016 Booker Prize, said that during the 2016 Man Booker Prize jury, "Han Kang is one of the greatest living writers of all time" 'The Vegetarian' was unanimously selected as the winner by all judges at the first reading. Jeong Yeo-ul, a literary critic, said that Han Kang's Nobel Prize in Literature will serve as an opportunity to enhance the status of the Nobel Prize in Literature, which has been considered to be somewhat flat because it has all three meanings: Asia, women, and youth.
In a situation where war and state violence continue around the world and democracy is threatened by emergency martial law in Korea, Han Kang's Nobel Prize in Literature comes with a more special meaning. MBC's special documentary commemorating the Nobel Prize in Literature by Han Kang will air at 10:50 p.m. today (16th).
soulhn1220@sportschosun.com
