The reason why "Nobel Literature Award" has to be Han River...What's in common in the work? [Y Record]

■ Host: anchor Lee Hyun-woong
■ Appearance: Chung Myung-kyo, honorary professor of Korean at Yonsei University

* The text below may differ from the actual broadcast content, so please check the broadcast for more accurate information. Please specify [YTN Newswide] when quoting.

◇Anchor> Professor previously said that Han River is an avant-garde novelist rather than a popular novelist, what did this mean?

◆Jeongmyeonggyo> Han River is a writer with a very good style. It's not easy to understand because you're a writer who embraces a certain historical fact deep inside and presents it after a kind of internal reflection. But when I read it, I've written good works where I literally feel the language because the upheaval in Korean history, the painful lives of individuals who are sacrificed there, reflection on the painful lives, anger, and so on. So in that sense, it is far from a popular novel that generally conveys events to us.

◇Anchor> As you mentioned, we have dealt with important events in Korean history such as 5.18 and 4.3, but aren't there many works dealing with such historical events? Then, what is different about Han Kang?

◆Jeongmyeonggyo> Han Kang is focused on individuals who are victimized by the tyranny of history, so each individual's specific and intimate story, and then the feelings that arise in his head and rise from his heart are well described. To make it a bit wider, I've used this anywhere in the Han River.Ma is the unique aesthetics of Korean literature. I've written such aesthetics that are quite aesthetically beautiful that go well with what's called the aesthetics of waiting and then the aesthetics of Jeonghwa to purify historical wounds. I think it's the factor that made the Han River novel stand out.

◇Anchor> It was the same when the announcement was made about the award. If you listen to various reviews, there seem to be a lot of expressions that are poetic, do you actually agree with that?

◆Jeongmyeonggyo> Of course. It's quite poetic because it describes the flow of consciousness inside as if the stream were flowing very gently.

Excerpted from
: Lee Mi-young, editor of the digital news team

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