Han Kang to lecture in Korean at the Nobel Prize ceremony

Nobel laureate Han Kang will visit the Nobel Museum on Friday morning as her first official schedule. Laureates will donate their collections to the museum and leave their signatures on chairs. The Nobel Museum, established in 2001 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Nobel Prize, presents exhibitions highlighting the achievements of Alfred Nobel and past Nobel Prize winners. The donation will be held privately, with collections donated by Han Kang to be announced afterwards. She will hold a press conference for local and foreign media on the same day.

The most noticeable event among pre-award ceremony events is the laureates’ lecture held at the Stockholm Stock Exchange on the following day. The tradition of delivering a one-hour lecture is carried out by laureates across all categories. Lectures of Nobel laureates of literature attract so much attention that they are later published as books. Han will give a lecture in her native language, Korean, and the translated text (in Swedish and English) will be posted on the Nobel Prize website. This day's lecture will be broadcast live on YouTube.

According to the literary community, Han reportedly wrote a first draft of a lecture reflecting her work, which was sent to the Swedish Academy mid-last month. “I heard that the lecture was written in a sincere and calm tone, just like her work. It’s not likely that the gentle and quiet sense of humor that was reflected in her acceptance speech for the Pony Chung Innovation Award in October would be found in the upcoming lecture,” said a source from the literature community. “Whenever I think about the three imaginary books to be lined in front of me for as long as I live, I have an ominous feeling that I won’t be able to die properly,” joked Han at the Pony Chung Awards ceremony, drawing laughter from the audience.

Korean will also be spoken at the award ceremony next Tuesday, as it is customary for an Academy official to introduce the fourth winner of the Literature Prize, following Physics, Chemistry, and Medicine, in Swedish for about five minutes, but speaking the final sentence leading the winner to the podium in the winner's native language. For example, “Dear author Han Kang, I ask you to come forward to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature from His Majesty the King and offer you warm congratulations from the Swedish Academy,” will be spoken in Korean. Translator Park Ok-kyung, who translated “We Do Not Part” into Swedish, was tasked with the Korean translation.


김소민 기자 somin@donga.com