The 2024 Nobel Prize winner in literature, Han Kang, has reportedly expressed that she will not be holding a press conference and celebrate amid global wars, as her books sell out in South Korea.
According to South Korean media reports, Han's father conveyed her message during a press conference.
"She said that with the wars raging between Russia and Ukraine, Israel and Palestine, with deaths being reported every day, she could not hold a celebratory press conference.
"She asked for understanding in this matter," said Han Seung-won, who is also a well-known novelist in South Korea.
Mr Han said his daughter also discouraged him from holding a celebratory banquet for her.
"She said: 'Please don't celebrate while witnessing these tragic events.'"
Han said in a statement issued late on Friday by her publisher that she was "deeply grateful" for the award.
Han Kang is the first South Korean to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. (AFP: Jung Yeon-je)
Meanwhile, major South Korean bookstores sold out of Han Kang's books on Friday, as sales skyrocketed and the share price of local publishers soared.
The first Asian woman to win the literary award, short story writer and novelist Han is best known overseas for The Vegetarian, her first novel to be translated into English, which won the Man Booker Prize in 2016.
The 53-year-old was honoured with the Nobel "for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life", the Swedish Academy said.
Shortly after the announcement, which came late Thursday in Seoul, major bookstore websites across the country crashed as people rushed to order her books.
Han's works quickly filled all 10 slots on bookstore chain Kyobo's real-time bestseller list, with the company telling AFP 60,000 copies of Han's books had been sold early Friday, 451 times more than the day before.
"We're obviously thrilled, and it's incredible to see so many people wanting to read books all at once," Kyobo spokesperson Kim Hyun-jung told AFP.
"Since there has never been a Nobel Prize-winning work in the Korean language, I think readers are both excited and somewhat unaccustomed to this very happy situation."
People read The Vegetarian by Han Kang, who won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature. (Reuters: Kim Soo-hyeon)
Shares of online book retailers such as YES24 and Millie Seojae skyrocketed Friday, reaching the daily limit of 30 per cent, after which trade is suspended.
A YES24 spokesperson told AFP that almost 80,000 copies of Han's three books — Human Acts, The Vegetarian, and I Do Not Bid Farewell — had been sold as of Friday morning.
Significant win
An expert says Han Kang's Nobel win is a "massive milestone" for the South Korean society and literary scene. (AP: Lee Jin-man)
After graduating from Yonsei University with a major in Korean literature, Han worked for a literary journal before making her debut in 1993 with a collection of poems, followed by a collection of short stories.
Private but not reclusive, the soft-spoken Han became a constant presence on South Korea's literary scene, publishing novels as well as short-story collections and children's books.
Andrew David Jackson, an associate professor in Korean Studies at Monash University, said Han's Nobel prize win was seen as a "massive milestone for South Koreans for years to come".
"This will be up there alongside the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games, 2002 World Cup success, the global success of BTS, the popularity of Squid Game and then the Academy Award success of Parasite."
Professor Jackson said previously less attention was paid to South Korean literature as compared to its food, cinema, sports and popular culture.
"One [reason] might be the very dark quality of a lot of literature in the past, that dealt with some heavy themes related to Korea's history of loss of sovereignty, colonialism and dictatorship.
"And there were a lot of issues of accessibility of Korean literature in the past, particularly with the quality of the translations."
"Now you have some really fantastic translators who are doing a great job of bringing these works to life. Deborah Smith is almost as famous for her translation of Han Kang's work as Han Kang herself."
Han's father spoke proudly of his daughter and her works.
"There's nothing to discard in Kang's novels. Each one is a masterpiece."
Asked to describe Han as a writer in one sentence, he said: "She is a good young novelist who writes with poetic sensibility".
Besides her father, a prolific writer whose novels are often set in his coastal hometown, her brother is also a novelist.
First Asian woman to win Nobel literary award
Han is one of only 18 women to receive the literature Nobel out of 121 laureates.
A 1980 massacre in her native city of Gwangju, when South Korea's then-military government violently repressed a democratic uprising, later inspired her book "Human Acts".
"I'm glad that Han Kang (was recognised for) being a writer who draws on the pain experienced in South Korea," one reader wrote on X.
"She has continued to speak out as a minority — whether as someone from the margins, a woman, a feminist, or a person born in a region facing discrimination."
Han Kang's books are known for poetic prose that confronts historical traumas. (Reuters: Kim Soo-hyeon)
Kim Min-ji, a 27-year-old fan, said she ran to the Kyobo Book Centre as soon as she heard Han won the Nobel.
"I told everyone she was going to be a great author, for crying out loud. It was like I won the award, really," she told AFP.
"A South Korean winning the Nobel literature prize is just crazy."
AFP/ABC