[Exclusive Interview Transcript] Han Kang on Writing, Life, and Literature

Han Kang

Han Kang, the South Korean author best known to global readers for her work “The Vegetarian,” was named the winner of this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature by the Swedish Academy on Thursday. Just 10 hours before the announcement, Han had sent her second response to an email interview with Maeil Business Newspaper, where she shared insights into her recent life, writing, literature, and her new work.

As she answered the interview questionnaire on Sunday, before the excitement of Thursday’s announcement, Han began by expressing her love for reading, describing herself as a reader before a writer. “I can only fall asleep peacefully after reading at least a paragraph, no matter how exhausted I am that day,” she said. She also shared her recent reading list, which included “Light and Melody” by Cho Hae-jin, “One of Them Is a Lie” by Kim Ae-ran, as well as “An Inventory of Losses” by Judith Schalansky and “Letters on the Elements of Botany” by Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

As the winner of several international literary awards, she says she is deeply grateful but also feels a sense of pressure. “Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, the pressure disappears as I write. Writing fiction, whether it is a short or long piece, is not an easy task and leaves very little mental space for the burden to remain,” she said.

It was during a workshop trip from her workplace, publishing house Samtoh, to Yeongjong Island, Incheon, that she was inspired to write a story about two people standing in front of rusty anchors revealed in the sandy mudflats after the tide had gone out. Her first short story, “Red Anchor,” was born that way. Han says that, around that time, she was thinking a lot about how people endure life, dream of leaving, and bear the fatigue of life alone.

Her curiosity and questioning are what drive her to keep writing. “For me, novels are a continuous, connected work. It is not that the stories are connected, but rather that questions come up one after another. I am almost always preoccupied with certain questions, and my novels are written as attempts to push those questions further.”

“Rather than finding answers to those questions,” she continued, “I move on to the next one when I feel I’ve reached the end of one question” but notes that some of her works are interrelated. “The Vegetarian,” for example, is a variation of “The Fruit of My Woman,” as the author herself admits, but she says she does not consciously think of her previous works when writing new ones. She notices herself changing over time and between her works, but sometimes certain aspects remain unchanged. “I think that may be at the core of who I am,” she added.

Han’s experience living in the city of Warsaw had a direct influence on her writing of “The White Book.” She genuinely loved her time there writing the book but does not necessarily think her time in Warsaw was a turning point for her to shift towards stories engaging with historicity and regionality. “Human Acts” and “I Do Not Bid Farewell” are like two connected novels. In fact, the epilogue of “Human Acts” and the prologue of “I Do Not Bid Farewell” are connected, and I wrote them hoping they would serve as a bridge between the present and the past, fiction and reality,” she explained. “‘I Do Not Bid Farewell’ started from a dream I had shortly after the publication of ‘Human Acts.’ In that dream, black logs with cut-off tops were planted in fields by the thousands, and behind them were graves, with the sea that had come rushing in sweeping away the graves. Sometimes dreams can have a stronger impact than real-life experiences. It took about nine years to write both novels, and I feel like the dream I had in the middle embraces both works.”

Is there an overarching theme in Han Kang’s novels? “I think I have always pondered what it means to be human, what it means to live, and I wanted to address such thoughts through different novels each time. I hope there was something meaningful in sharing my search with the readers of my works.” She said in a 2016 interview around the time she won the International Man Booker Prize that “the theme of humanity has been the driving force” behind her works. “Nowadays, I often find myself thinking about life itself. I have developed an interest in things that rise up, carrying life, and I want to explore this sense of life in my next novel.”

She already has readers around the world, but with the Nobel Prize, her work will likely reach an even more global audience. What would it mean for both writers and readers to be read and understood globally, across language and cultural divides, and to develop broad empathy? “Literature inherently has the power of connection. Language is like a thread that links us together. As long as there are readers anywhere, it is a natural process for Korean writers’ works to meet those readers,” Han said.

Are there any authors or works that Han holds dear? She does not think she has been deeply influenced by any specific writer, but says she was “deeply influenced, and sometimes moved,” by the image of authors as a collective. “Authors have always been a collective to me, each absorbed in their own way, trying to tackle and break through their respective subjects.”

What does Han believe is the power of writing and reading novels? What role do novels play in the world? Han says novels can help readers discover important emotions and questions. “In everyday life, it is not easy to see or express deep truths. It is not a typical dinner conversation with a friend to say that ‘I’ve been pondering what it means to live these days.’ The important emotions, deep questions, and thoughts beneath the surface that shake us and are hard to express, can be explored through literature. When people read these emotions in novels, they suddenly rediscover what was inside them. By becoming a character in a novel and repeatedly stepping outside of themselves and coming back, they experience a moment where their self-awareness breaks open, allowing them to see themselves clearly and transparently,” Han explains. “In that way, I believe literature is something essential to us, like a thread that connects us.”

When asked to describe the mental landscape that she sees as she writes, who is passing by, who is talking, and what is happening, Han had a simple answer. “Where a very small flame burns inside the heart, and a place where a sense of life similar to an electric current arises.”

The author is currently working on a new novel, which she initially planned to finish by summer 2024 but now assumes may stretch until winter. “It is always difficult to predict when I will finish a novel, and I tend to be wrong in my predictions.”