[Issue ON] Miracle of "Han River"...He also won the Booker Prize and the Nobel Prize in Literature.

■ Host: Youngsoo Kim Anchor, Lee Harin Anchor
■ Starring: Kim Sung-soo Cultural Critic

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

[Anchor]
At the beginning of the news, we delivered the expression of the bookstore at this time. The works of Han Kang, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature, are all sold out now.

Regarding Han Kang, Han Kang, Hanlimwon evaluated his work, saying, "It is an intense poetic prose that confronts historical trauma and exposes the fragility of human life." Let's take a closer look with cultural critic Kim Sung-soo. Welcome.

[Kim Sung-soo]
Hello, I'm Kim Sung-soo.

[Anchor]
Han Kang won Korea's first Nobel Prize in Literature, and Lee Han has won many world-renowned literary awards and was actually one of the leading candidates.

[Kim Sung-soo]
Of course. He said he didn't expect it at all and was surprised when he answered the phone 10 minutes ago, but I think it's a humble comment. Of course, overseas betting sites, such as this, did not predict Han Kang's award at all. If I had informed the pain and conveyed the pain like an article, how did Lee Han-gang feel about it? And how my pain communicated with them, and I solved it in poetic language. So in some ways, in the eyes of young people after a generation, poetic languages that allow them to feel pain and emotions in their imagination are more sublimated than factual languages that are poured out when they encounter the Gwangju Democratization Movement or the Jeju 4.3 Incident.

[Anchor]
Originally, he made his debut as a poet and won the Nobel Prize for Literature as a novelist. After winning the Nobel Prize for Literature, we had a brief telephone interview, and we'll listen to that interview and talk more.

[Han Kang / Nobel Prize winner: I'm very surprised and honored. Of course, I was surprised. I was contacted on a peaceful evening when I had just finished dinner with my son. I grew up reading books in Korean as well as translations since I was young. I can say that I grew up with Korean literature. I want to celebrate quietly while drinking tea with my son.]

[Anchor]
I grew up with Korean literature. Korean literature was re-examined and Korean literature was originally there. I think it will be a literature that will be re-examined and paid attention from all over the world.

[Kim Sung-soo]
Of course. We've already checked the power of various contents in Korea through K-pop, K-drama, and K-movie. So why not literature? So, the achievements of our literature were already with all the world's contemporaries living with the same concerns and wounds, and we expressed them beautifully enough. The problem was that I didn't have enough legs to communicate. In the case of writer Han Kang, he said he was very lucky to translate. As such a translator was attached, a bridge was created to look into the center of the artist, and it was loved even more. Recently, such businesses that support translation in Korea have become active. I think these achievements will be recognized more in the future.

[Anchor]
Speaking of translators. Deborah Smith, a translator of Han River, is drawing attention, and you learned Korean by yourself? How is this possible? [Kim Sung-soo] This is amazing, too. We shouldn't be stuck in our dogma before, so we look for good translators first. So I pay them to translate. So we're trying to achieve something. But what is more important in the first place is that we need to have affection for Korean literature and love for the writer. People like Deborah Smith looked into Korea's society objectively enough and chose a writer who really fits her heart. And I started translating it first. So if you look at Deborah Smith's translation, you use words that make use of Korean pronunciations. It is not that we should use a language that we can understand with literary superiority, but that the taste of the writing comes to life, and especially Han Kang's writing has many poetic expressions, so it is necessary to make use of the rhyme. I made an excellent choice to translate those things as they are. That's what moved people around the world.

[Anchor]
The publishing industry is now looking forward to it. It can be seen as such an award that has made a big difference in the Korean publishing and literary circles, so what kind of impact do you think it will have in the future?

[Kim Sung-soo]
First of all, I think there will be a lot more people who read books in text and in text. And I think you can feel the power of that text. Above all, because it created a milestone, there is another goal for junior artists and contemporary artists to take on these challenges. If it weren't for Bong Joon-ho, I wouldn't even dream that we would be able to win the Academy Award. I always thought that the Nobel Prize for Literature is a dream that cannot be achieved in our lives, but now that I know it is possible, I expect the second and third Nobel Prize writers to come out.

[Anchor]
That's right. It was a big slope. I really want to hear Han Kang's interview. But I guess Han Kang said that it's difficult for him to interview for the time being. We're at war.

[Kim Sung-soo]
What it means is that when your father heard this amazing news, he thought it was fake news at first. But it was really true. So why don't we have a feast when such a surprising thing happened? Then, writer Han Kang said, "There are wars in two places now, and people are dying. But can I have a feast just because I have a slope? That's why he said he was trying to refrain from holding a press conference. I think this is what an intelligent person looks like. So I think it's even more comforting.

[Anchor]
I see. Thank you very much. So far, I've talked with cultural critic Kim Sung-soo. Thank you very much. Thank you.