Han Kang

Han Kang is a South Korean writer born on November 27, 1970, in Gwangju, South Korea, into a literary family—her father is the novelist Han Seung-won. Her family moved to Seoul when she was nine, just before the Gwangju Uprising, an event that profoundly influenced her writing. She graduated from Yonsei University in 1993 with a degree in Korean language and literature and began her literary career in the early 1990s. Han Kang gained international acclaim with her 2007 novel The Vegetarian, the first Korean-language book to win the International Booker Prize in 2016, translated by Deborah Smith. Other notable works include Human Acts (2014), which confronts the Gwangju Uprising; The White Book (2017); and We Do Not Part (2021). In 2024, she became the first Korean and first Asian woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature for her 'intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.'