It was only a question of time before South Korean literature emerged on the world stage. On Thursday Han Kang, author of the cult novel The Vegetarian, became the first South Korean writer to be awarded the Nobel prize for literature. This is the latest triumph of hallyu – the South Korean wave – that has been scoring firsts across all cultural forms with the phenomenal success of pop bands like BTS; the 2020 Oscar-winning satire Parasite (the first film not in the English language to take the top prize); TV sensations like Squid Game (Netflix’s most watched show ever), and Pachinko, an adaptation of Min Jin Lee’s bestselling novel, currently in its second series. Now K-lit joins K-pop, K-drama and K-beauty. South Korea is a cultural powerhouse – with a Nobel laureate to prove it.
After a century of colonialism, division, dictatorship and struggle to democracy, South Korean writers have powerful, often unheard, stories to tell. South Korean writing was the focus of the 2014 London Book Fair, but it was Han (not among the 10 authors invited over) whose work captured the outside world’s imagination a couple of years later.
