A Year After the Nobel Prize in Literature, Continuing Han Kang's Literature

It's been a year since Han Kang won the Nobel Prize in Literature.
That fall, there were readers who wanted to read Han Kang's literature again.
They walked along the Han River, traveled to the sea of ​​“Love in Yeosu,” Gwangju of “The Boy Comes,” the birch forest of “White,” and Jeju of “No Farewell.”
『Han River Literary Journey』 is a book that was born that way.
A record of ten people who read Han Kang's novels together, visited the places in person, and thought about literary questions through their bodies.


Reading becomes a journey, and travel becomes thinking.
Where does literature take us?
This book is one answer to that question.
A year spent with Han Kang's literature, and a testimony to the power of literature to connect life and the world.

We were readers from the future.
As if holding the answer key in one's hand, I already knew it when I opened the author's first novel.
The fact that this writer would later receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.
- From “A Year with the Han River”

I fell in love with the rich metaphors and sorrowful characters contained in “Love in Yeosu” because they were so captivating.
I felt aggrieved that I found out about the author so late.
--- p.7

The list of works by Han Kang, who is living in the same era, will continue to grow in the future.
His literature is a work in progress.
Here's a way to get a closer look at the author's work and visit the locations in his novels.
It is not necessarily limited to a physical location.
When I reinterpret and transform myself through Han Kang's novels, and thus time and space gain new meaning, the Han River becomes a place.

--- p.29

The time I spent in Yeosu was incredibly beautiful.
Yeosu, the city of Jeongseon and Jahun, the old city that was also a painful place for me, embraced me so affectionately.
Throughout my trip, kind people reached out to me everywhere, and I never felt lonely even though I was alone.
When life gets tough or I want to indulge in the traveler's charm, I will go back to Yeosu.
The sunset will be beautifully colored in Yeosu.

--- p.46

My father was a miner.
He worked as a rock driller in the mining department for 20 years.
For my father and the other adults there, it was a foreign land, but for our generation, who were born and raised there, it was home.
My father came there to live, but he always lived with the intention of leaving, and I, who left my hometown in my teens, have been living my life wandering the sky and mountains of my hometown.
I grew up with a handful of light that my father dug up from the depths of darkness.
As Father descended deeper into the earth, we were able to emerge into the world, little by little, following the afterglow of that light.
My father, who dug the ground in the dark, left me a legacy of how to live by digging for life.
--- pp.65-66

I see the crying sea in 『Black Deer』.
The sea depicted in the novel becomes even more meaningful as it is layered with various emotions.
We encounter that place deeply while fathoming the knots of meaning.
That's why we read literature.
To see things differently than before.
As stories are added to the Jeju sea, I remember the place differently than before.
As I walk through the sentences in the novel, I make the knots of my memories a little more colorful.
I look out at the Jeju sea and hear the sound of crying.
These are tears filled with light.
The waves of light cry.
.
--- p.82

As a child, Jang Woon-hyung encountered adults who wore masks and deceived themselves and others, and he began to ask himself, "Where did it all go wrong?"
Jang Woon-hyung, who grew up seeing his parents place importance on the gaze and attention of others, loses the boundary between truth and falsehood.

--- pp.103-104

The most valuable experience I had while reading “The Vegetarian” was the change that occurred in me as I read it over and over again.
It was a time when we could create a ‘fourth perspective.’
Unless you read the book, you won't know whether you will remain a bystander to the violence in the work, become aware of the traces of your own harm, choose to resist alongside Yeong-hye, or become a fourth-person perspective.
This is also why I would like to recommend it to those who haven't read it yet.
--- p.123

As I climbed to the top along the old Misiryeong road, it seemed to become as transparent as the wind.
Now I remember what I have to do.
He said that he would walk again and live with the help of the 15 needles in his numb ankle.
I will survive and embark on a new journey that will bring me down again.
If the wind blows again, go that way.
--- pp.142-143

The streets of New York at midday were blazing under the harsh sunlight.
I walked and walked, feeling the force of the setting sun.
The grid-like streets of New York were like a maze to travelers.
I needed my own travel map to avoid getting lost in the maze.
A map for the so-called 'journey following the author's footsteps'.
I searched for it as if I was collecting traces of writers who were active in New York.
Even when the writer leaves this world, the place remains.
As time passes, places also age.
Although his appearance has changed, when we imagine the writer who stayed there, he comes across not as a stuffed name but as a living, breathing person.
As I close the distance between myself and the author, capturing the landscapes he must have seen in his eyes in my heart, the work also seems to become a little closer.
--- pp.144-145

The gray clouds in the sky were clearing away, but Hwagyesa Temple in the photo was still hazy.
The moment I absentmindedly glanced at my phone, oh my gosh, there was a lot of fine moisture on the lens.
There was secret evidence left there that I had secretly visited the deep-sea forest from the Treasure Hall.
--- p.169

It would be difficult to conclude that the cause of my father's death was witnessing the scene of the airborne troops suppressing and massacring civilians.
But one scene where I encountered pain seeps into my subconscious without disappearing or being shaken off.
Through the years that I was unable to face because I was afraid, I approached my father using the power of memory.
Can the present save the past? As author Han Kang pondered,
I also find myself asking the question, “Can I save myself?”
--- p.178

Now I am a civilian, and there is no one to give me orders anymore.
That fact gives me a little bit of reassurance.
But that alone is not enough.
As long as we live, we must not forget Gwangju.
We must not forget the square where we gathered that day, and the fear that enveloped it.
Remembering is something that will protect me and at the same time be for everyone.
--- p.197

I wake up in the early morning dusk of midsummer when no one is awake and open 『White』.
Because I want to think about the white things that Han River wanted to give to 'you'.
Then, that winter, I wanted to go to the birch forest where it was snowing lightly.
A place in Won-dae-ri, Inje, Gangwon-do.
As far as I know, it's the place that best suits silence.
Because it's the best place to think about those white things.

--- p.211

The weather was dazzlingly beautiful during my stay in Jeju.
I took in the scenery while breathing in the fresh air carried by Jeju's wind.
In terms of the Han River connection method, the nature I encountered in Jeju is no different from the nature of 70 years ago.
The face of pain that Jeju wraps around with beauty is revealed.
The Jeju scenery I encountered after reading the novel is no longer the same as before.
It was a time to experience firsthand the Han River's question: why is the world so painful and violent, and at the same time, how is the world so beautiful?
How can pain and beauty coexist?
There is a love between them that does not give up.
If pain is proof of love, then love is the act of enduring that pain.
Love that endures is painful but beautiful.
Just like how beautiful is a love that doesn't say goodbye.

--- p.245