Han Kang formally receives her Nobel Prize in Literature medal and diploma at the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony in Stockholm.
On December 10, 2024, Han Kang attended the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony in Stockholm, Sweden, where she formally received her Nobel Prize in Literature medal, diploma, and cash award from the hands of the King of Sweden, as is customary for all Nobel laureates. The ceremony, held annually on the anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death, is one of the most prestigious events in the global cultural calendar.
As part of Nobel Week, Han Kang also delivered her Nobel Lecture, reflecting on her literary journey, the themes of trauma, violence, and tenderness that permeate her work, and her personal relationship to language and writing since childhood. Her lecture drew particular attention for its meditations on how literature can bear witness to historical atrocities, including the Gwangju Uprising that shaped much of her fiction.
This ceremony represented the culmination of Han Kang's decades-long literary career, transforming her from a respected but internationally under-recognized Korean novelist into a truly global literary figure. Her presence on the Stockholm stage as the first Korean and first Asian woman literature laureate carried enormous symbolic weight, signaling a broader shift in the Nobel Committee's willingness to recognize non-Western literary traditions and voices long marginalized in the global literary canon.