Han Kang was born in Gwangju, South Korea and moved to Seoul at the age of ten, settling in the Suyuri neighborhood. She studied Korean literature at Yonsei University and began her literary career shortly after graduation, initially working as a reporter for Saemteo magazine. In 1993, she made her official literary debut with five poems. The following year, she began writing fiction, winning the 1994 Seoul Shinmun Spring Literary Contest with her short story Red Anchor. Han’s first short story collection, Yeosu, was published in 1995. In 1998, she participated in the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program, supported by the Arts Council Korea. From 2007 to 2018, she taught creative writing at the Seoul Institute of the Arts.
Her diverse body of work includes short story collections such as The Fruit of My Woman and Fire Salamander, poetry including I Put the Evening in the Drawer and novels such as Black Deer, Your Cold Hands, The Vegetarian, Greek Lessons, Human Acts, The White Book, and We Do Not Part.
Over the years, Han has received numerous literary honors. She was awarded the 25th Korean Novel Award for her novella Baby Buddha in 1999, the 2000 Today’s Young Artist Award from the Korean Ministry of Culture, the 2005 Yi Sang Literary Award for her short story Mongol Spot, and the 2010 Dongri Literary Award for Ink and Blood. She also received the Manhae Literary Prize for Human Acts (2014), the Hwang Sun-won Literary Award for While One Snowflake Melts (2015), and the Kim Yujung Literary Prize for Farewell (2018).
The Vegetarian, her first novel translated into English garnered international acclaim and won the 2016 International Booker Prize, shared with translator Deborah Smith. Han was later awarded the Premio Malaparte for the Italian translation of Human Acts and was selected in 2019 as the fifth writer for the Future Library Project in Norway; her contribution, Dear Son, My Beloved, will remain unpublished until 2114.
Most recently, We Do Not Part won the 2023 Prix Médicis in France and the 2024 Émile Guimet Prize. In 2023, she was elected an International Writer of the Royal Society of Literature, recognising her enduring impact on world literature. In 2024, Han Kang was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
