How novelist Han Kang’s works are created

More than a fortnight has passed novelist Han Kang won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Han Kang, who has been refraining from public activities since the Pony Chung Awards ceremony on Oct. 17, is known to be focusing on writing a new book to be published in the first half of next year. “My favorite time is thinking of the novels I wish to write,” she said.

What does the ‘real life’ of novelist Han Kang look like? Your reporter tried to portray her life with editors who previously worked with Han Kang and Han Kang's past remarks.

What stands out in Han Kang's writing is the vivid description of real-life experience. In ‘We Do not Part,’ snow is described using sight, hearing, and touch. “Whenever it snowed, I went out and picked up the snow and watched it until it melted, and I could feel how cold it was. When it started snowing, I would take a taxi to the nearest mountain and climb the hiking trail like a person out of her mind,” she said in a book discussion held in 2021 after her book was published.

She walked along a stream at a windy midnight, recalling how the snow had melted on her skin. That memory was revived by the following passage from her book: “Snowflakes that stuck to the windshield like wet lint,” “Like the end of music resembling silence drawing closer to the end, like fingertips that first attempted to touch the shoulder but carefully put down.”

She puts herself in unique situations to fully immerse herself in her work. When the power went out in an isolated house, she covered the boiler sensor and unplugged the refrigerator to see how bright the candles could shine. She also lay down under her desk to get a feel for what it felt like to be inside a hole.

Where direct experience was not available, she set out to research. When writing ‘Human Acts’ (published by Changbi), which deals with the May 18 Gwangju Democratization Movement, she read through the whole history collection containing oral testimonies of 900 people. “After I was done, I felt I had a good picture of what happened in my head. I then read through books that analyzed the event in detail, taking a spiral approach of expanding knowledge,” she said at the 2020 Asian Literature Festival.

The characters in the work are like the alter egos of the author. The main character in ‘We Do Not Part’ is a novelist, unable to eat or sleep and suffering from nightmares. Perhaps the novelist reflects part of Han Kang? “Sometimes I reflect an aspect of me in the characters, but I hope you don’t think it’s 100% me,” she said.


김소민 기자 somin@donga.com