[Scene video +] "My daughter is suspicious all of a sudden... I can meet the translator well and do "good translation".

[Anchor]
Yesterday, for the first time in Korea, novelist Han Kang was honored with the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Han's father is also Han Seung-won, a novelist who is widely known for his novel "Azase Barrage."

Even now, I am still engrossed in creating in my hometown of Jangheung Haesang Cave in Jeollanam-do.

I held a press conference on my daughter's acceptance of the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Let's go to the scene.

[Writer Han Seungwon / Nobel Prize for Literature: Han Kang's Father]
I'm a skin. You have to go to the kernels and listen to them properly. He's born in 70 now, so he's 55 years old in our age. But my birthday is November 27th, so I'm 53 years old in other people's age. That's why most of the judges in the Hall of Fame choose old writers or old poets. So our daughter doesn't know how many years later she'll be riding. That's what I thought. Yesterday's decision was too sudden.

I can say it's embarrassing. I forgot to go to bed, but the phone rang somewhere and I opened it, and a Dong-A Ilbo reporter called me. So I asked what happened, and he asked if I heard about your daughter's award. So what are you talking about? I asked if you were tricked into calling after hearing fake news, and I said no. There was a full-fledged report at 8:05. So it was around 8:10 then.

He asked me to tell him my daughter's phone number. What most reporters don't know about her daughter's phone number is that she changed her phone number because her cell phone was hacked about two or three months ago. So you don't know your phone number unless you're in a very close relationship with the publishers. So give me your phone number to an easy-going father. That doesn't mean I can give you my phone number. Because I don't know what the situation is.

That's what I'm doing, so they don't even have an address that they knew before. The child built a house in Hyoja-dong, Jongno, and the house is the size of a nostril. So it's a small house where I can barely write by myself. I bought a used house in Janghwamun-ro and renovated it this time. It's been 20 days since I moved to a new building. That's why I don't even know my new address.

So reporters are bound to be embarrassed. I think that's why he called me, so I said I couldn't tell you my phone number and hung up, but I couldn't answer all the calls because of how the calls came in. Fortunately, the county chief also called and answered the phone, and after that, he said no, so I didn't answer the phone at all. And I turned off the phone.

Then, all the calls were sent by text messages, so about 150 of them. So I talked to my daughter on the phone with Mana, how did this happen? I asked if it was true and he said it was true. I was caught up in embarrassment.

So I can't say I'm having fun or I can't say I'm happy. The reason I did that was because I said that earlier. When COVID-19 became a pandemic world, the Nobel Prize in Culture was suspended for a year. So the next year, I gave them the Nobel Prize for Literature. One of them was 57 years old.

That's why he was very young, but my daughter was younger, so she rode it only a few years later, but she said she rode it this time, so I guess that's why. But I'll tell you as I guess why they chose our daughter. I'd like you to say how you feel.

And I talked to my daughter on the phone from Mana, so I did that. If you communicate with reporters one by one, you won't be able to endure it if they do it satisfactorily. That's why I won't call you for a day. Still, he struggled a lot to solve the problem of calling by knowing the phone number anywhere and anywhere.

But I talked to Mana on the phone, and I said that. Today, I told you to choose either Changbi or Munhakdongne or Lee Munjin and set up a press conference. I said I'd try that. Talking to you the next morning changed my mind.

It's not a sense of being a writer living in Korea, but it's not that kind of thought, but it's changed to a global sense. Russia, Ukraine, Israel, and Palestine wars are fierce, so people are being carried out every day, so what kind of party are they going to have and have a press conference with joy? He said he's not going to hold a press conference.

So, I couldn't resist my sense of being the father of the winner living in Korea and prepared this press conference. So please understand and cover it. Ask me a question.

[Reporter]
What does the Nobel Prize mean to writers? I thought it was the most prestigious award. But your father is also a literary man. But your daughter received such an award. What does it mean?

[Writer Han Seungwon / Nobel Prize for Literature: Han Kang's Father]
The first one is because they pay a lot of money. And the other thing is that I don't just focus on the works I've recently released, but I'm looking at the works I've released in my whole life as a whole, so I've been awarded a lot to old people who come to a conclusion. So our daughter's turn hasn't come yet. But the hope is that one person was 57 years old when two people received it repeatedly after the pandemic. Then in the next four years, my daughter will be the same. That's what I had in mind.

But the judges of the Hallimwon are good at accidents. Because reporters write a lot before October 10th. There are a lot of speculative reports on articles. But the speculation is all wrong. There is no reporter who knows the judges of the Hallimwon. I have no choice but to read the article carefully again this time. After naming all the world's most famous and old writers, the most likely person is a woman this year, the most likely given to a female Chinese writer. And a Korean poet named Kim Hye-soon. But my daughter didn't name it.

I guess he said he was still young. Then, Hwang Seo-jung and my daughter are mentioned at the end, but the chance of winning the award is very slim. That was the conclusion. But I thought the other way around. The judges of Hallimwon are good at accidents, so they guessed it and played games. I don't know if anyone got the Han River right, but they must have made a lot of money. What do you call that? I'm going to bet on something. But since he's good at accidents, he might unexpectedly choose our dog. I was going to forget to sleep.

But I'll tell you why they chose our river. My daughter's sentences are very delicate, beautiful and sad. So, how you translate the sad sentence into a foreign language will determine whether you win or not. Our Korean language has its own unique sense.

But how can a person who grew up in a foreign country know the strange taste of Korean? But is it British Smith Davis or Davis Smith? Anyway, I'm not good at memorizing names. He's a young critic who translated vegetarian, and he grew up in a traditional family in England and studied Korean for seven years. After coming to Korea, I studied hard at the Korean Language Center of Seoul Graduate School, and then I saw this and that work as a Korean sense, and I think vegetarians liked it the most.

So I translated it, and since I learned my childhood in traditional British society, I'm the best person to translate it when I get a sense of Korean. That's why I met the translator well and made a good translation. So I didn't know the family situation in Korea, so I made a mistake in my personal relationship.

We say, "Homyeong unni." We do this. The American people just call their names. So I made a mistake in translating it, but I guess he was very good at translating the taste of Korean. That's why I became the first Korean to win the Man Booker Award for impressing British writers, especially vegetarian judges.

So, the level of British readers is much higher than that of Korean readers. The novel was already in the drawer seven years before it was translated. But when I newly set it up, it sells nearly a million copies. And it played a role in promoting Kang as a world-class writer. So writers need to meet translators well in order for their work to become known worldwide.

Even so, why Hwang Seok-young is the leader of our generation and is often said to be a first-class writer. In particular, Kim Yun-sik called him a first-class writer, but the writer was included in the 13 Man Booker Award nominations and also in the 6th, as a second candidate. But I failed in the final trial. Why did I do that?

I'll tell you the reason from now on. As a writer of the same generation, I compared the work of my daughter, who is a later generation, and I thought that I was reading it. In the literary world of our novels, you all know that it is European realism and realism. The novel came in and was translated into Japanese and then translated into Korean. I read them and studied them, so I called my generation, Hwang Seok-young's generation, the third generation, and now Kang and other writers of that age are becoming the fourth generation.

However, third-generation novels sell very well, and as you can see from the third-generation literature collection, I also went into the book from Samsung Publishing, and the book went out of nearly 3 million quality. It's 24 books. So look at how many were sold. Realism, however, is a popular trend, and the characteristic of realist novels was when the democratization movement was in full swing. There's an element of resistance in that novel.

and realism is a generation where realism, documentary precision, and especially the labor movement and this kind of fiction, were the advantages. But in the middle of that, our literature is in English. There are English-American and French-speaking countries, but there are also Spanish-speaking cultures in South America. However, it can be divided into Anglo-American and South American cultures. The South American culture is represented by Don Quixote, and the Anglo-American culture is represented by Hamlet.

But around the 1980s, young novelists reflect on themselves when the novel, in which the South American culture wrote the fantastic realism of 100 years of solitude, comes in. Realism is not everything. So fantastic realism it's, so to speak, influenced by Don Quixote. There's a lot of humor and fantastic realism underneath in the South American culture, or mythical and fantastic.

So the literary attitudes of the third generation and the fourth generation of literature people who seem to belong to Kang-yi are, so to speak, whether they were influenced by fantastic realism, whether they had such a mythical taste, but one day, my novel contained a mythical, fantastic realism element. I thought of it from an early age. Then, a young writer who criticized my novel was from Jangheung.

What the writer says is that the grave of realist writers is the death of the realist writer when mythological elements are introduced into the novel. What an insulting and sad story. But now, the younger generation don't feel ashamed of it, they think of it as an advantage. The author Kang wrote literature more beautifully with mythical elements and fantastic realism elements.

So if you look at Kang's novel, which is said to be a red trap that appears in newspaper literature, the title and the first sentence depict a very fantastic world of beauty. And the novel The Boy Comes, as you may have read deeply, is also about a very poetic and fantastic world.

And the novel, which deals with the Jeju April 3 incident, is also released this time, when the novel begins, a writer-turned-journalist named Kyung-ah goes to Jeju Island to cover himself in the middle of winter. But in the first sentence, it leads to a fantastic realism atmosphere that's very creepy and mythical.

So, who was the head of the judging department who was judged by the marginalized Hanlimwon is a British journalist-turned-reviewer. He said this. It's reported in the newspaper. I saw that in the Chosun Ilbo. Historical trauma, so this is the subject of the novel. I can't draw a soft human love story that well. But Kang's sentence is perfect for drawing it. That's what I thought. So the translator must have translated the delicate and beautiful sentences of Kang's sentences and the sad sensibility.