Han Kang's work highlighted as Nobel Prize honors women's achievements

By KTimes

Various events during the Nobel Week (Dec. 5–12) in Stockholm, Sweden, highlighted women’s accomplishments, including a focus on South Korean author Han Kang, culminating on Dec. 10 (local time) with the Nobel Prize award ceremony.

While the Nobel Prize has been awarded since 1901, it has predominantly recognized men — a reflection of historical barriers to women’s participation in education and public life. These events aimed to spotlight the achievements of women and address the lingering gender disparity.

On Dec. 8, two days before the award ceremony, crowds gathered at the “Dome Adeton,” an installation near the Stockholm City Hall. Visitors admired portraits of 18 female Nobel Literature laureates engraved around the wooden structure.

Among these was a portrait of Han Kang, displayed alongside Selma Lagerlof, the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.

The Nobel Foundation emphasized that celebrating female laureates goes beyond individual recognition, shedding light on the imbalance that only 14.9 percent of the 121 Nobel Literature winners have been women.

Elise Sevin, the creator of Dome Adeton, said, “I wanted to emphasize the gender imbalance to highlight the need to address discrimination.”

Postcards and tote bags featuring the faces of the 18 female laureates are also available at the Nobel Museum gift shop.

A “Night of Literature” event held near the Dome Adeton showcased readings from works by female laureates, including Han Kang’s "Human Acts," along with excerpts from Italy’s Grazia Deledda, France’s Annie Ernaux, and Poland’s Olga Tokarczuk. The readings were presented in the original languages and in Swedish.

Shin Mi-seong, a librarian at the Stockholm City Library, participated as a Korean reader. She noted the surprise among Swedes at Han Kang’s youth, saying, “People were shocked that such a young female writer won the prize.”

At 54, Han Kang is the fifth-youngest laureate in history. Shin also mentioned Han’s growing popularity in Sweden, where her books have waiting lists of over 1,000 people and rarely stay on the shelves.

Spotlighting 65 female Nobel laureates

Adjacent to the Dome Adeton, the Stockholm City Hall displayed the nine-minute video artwork Reading Light, a media facade projection featuring portraits of 65 female Nobel Prize winners. This venue also hosted the Nobel banquet immediately following the award ceremony.

The video highlighted the stark gender disparity among Nobel laureates. Out of 976 individuals awarded across categories like Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Literature, Peace, and the later-added Economics Prize (since 1969), only 65 have been women, representing less than seven percent of all recipients.

The Nobel Foundation described the video as “a glowing tribute to the exceptional talents of women pioneers.”

Han Kang appeared twice in the video, which also included a quote from her novel "The White Book" — translated into Swedish, English, and Korean: “White, by nature, is nothing at all, but within that nothingness, everything exists.”

Reflecting on the installations, Elise Sevin said, “A year ago, I couldn’t have imagined that Reading Light would be situated next to the Dome Adeton. It’s a wonderful coincidence that these two works, both celebrating women’s achievements, are side by side.”

This article from the Hankook Ilbo, a sister publication of The Korea Times, is translated by a generative AI and edited by The Korea Times.