---
title: "South Korea's Han Kang wins 2024 Nobel literature prize"
description: "STOCKHOLM, Oct 10 (Reuters) - South Korean author Han Kang won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature for \"for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life,\" the award-giving body said on Thursday."
type: "NewsArticle"
publisher: "Daily Maverick"
site: "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za"
section: "Nobel prize"
author: "Reuters"
author_url: "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/author/reuters/"
canonical_url: "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2024-10-10-south-koreas-han-kang-wins-2024-nobel-literature-prize/"
published: "2024-10-10T13:06:58"
updated: "2024-10-10T13:07:00"
lang: "en-ZA"
word_count: 208
---

# South Korea's Han Kang wins 2024 Nobel literature prize

> STOCKHOLM, Oct 10 (Reuters) - South Korean author Han Kang won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature for "for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life," the award-giving body said on Thursday.

By Reuters · Published 10 October 2024, 15:06 SAST · Updated 10 October 2024, 15:07 SAST

## Content

The prize is awarded by the Swedish Academy and is worth 11 million Swedish crowns ($1.1 million).

The prizes, for achievements in science, literature and peace, were created through a bequest in the will of Swedish dynamite inventor and businessman [Alfred Nobel](https://www.reutersconnect.com/all?search=all%3AL8N3KZ08H&linkedFromStory=true). They have been awarded since 1901, with the final prize in the line-up - economics - being a later addition.

After [peace](https://www.reutersconnect.com/all?search=all%3AL8N3KY0D8&linkedFromStory=true), the literature award tends to garner the most attention, thrusting authors into the global spotlight and yielding a spike in book sales that can, however, be relatively short-lived for authors who are not household names.

Even so, the prize money and a place on a list that includes luminaries such as Irish poet W.B. Yeats, who won in 1923, American novelist Ernest Hemingway, who took the award in 1954, and Colombia's Gabriel Garcia Marquez, winner in 1982, is an appealing proposition.

Norwegian author and dramatist Jon Fosse won in [2023](https://www.reutersconnect.com/all?search=all%3AL1N3BB0TD&linkedFromStory=true).

The fourth award to be handed out every year, the literature prize follows those for [medicine](https://www.reutersconnect.com/all?search=all%3AL1N3LJ09J&linkedFromStory=true), [physics](https://www.reutersconnect.com/all?search=all%3AL1N3LK0DG&linkedFromStory=true) and [chemistry](https://www.reutersconnect.com/all?search=all%3AL1N3LL0C0&linkedFromStory=true) announced earlier this week.

(Reporting by Niklas Pollard, Simon Johnson and Johan Ahlander in Stockholm and Justyna Pawlak in Warsaw; additional reporting by Terje Solsvik in Oslo; Editing by Alex Richardson)