Korean writer Han Kang wins Nobel Prize in Literature

The Royal Swedish Academy has announced that Korean writer Han Kang has won the Nobel Prize in Literature 2023.

The Nobel Prize was first awarded in 1901, and has been awarded to male writers. Of the 120 winners, only 17 have been women, but the academy has made great strides in this regard, crowning eight women in the past twenty years.

While 30 English-language writers and 16 French-language writers have won, only one Arab writer has won the prize, the Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz in 1988.

The controversy over the Nobel Prize goes back to the founder of the awards, Alfred Bernhard Nobel. As the Swedish inventor of dynamite and other explosives, Nobel did not have a good public image. In fact, when his brother died, a French newspaper confused him with Alfred and used the headline "The merchant of death is dead."

It then stated that Nobel "became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before." Perhaps it was the early obituary that prompted Nobel to create the prizes of the same name in order to enhance his legacy.

While most people consider the Nobel Prize a great honor, two laureates have voluntarily declined the award. Jean-Paul Sartre, who declined all formal awards, did not accept the 1964 Literature Prize.

In 1974, he was joined by Le Duc Tho, who shared the Peace Prize with Henry Kissinger for their work in ending the Vietnam War. Tho declined to accept it, saying that "peace has not yet been achieved."