User:Ccmontgom/Han Gang

Han Gang
Occupation	Novelist
Nationality	South Korea
Period	1970-present

In this Korean name, the family name is Han.

Han Gang (born 1970) (Korean: 한강) is a South Korean writer.

Life

Han Kang is the daughter of novelist Han Seung-won and she took her pen-name in reference to the Han River which flows through downtown Seoul. Her debut work, Love in Yeosu, was published in 1995 and attracted attention because it was precisely and tightly narrated. Han wrote Vegetarian, and its sister-work, Mongolian Spot by hand, as overuse of the computer keyboard had damaged her wrist. In her college years Kang became obsessed with a line of poetry from Yi Sang: “I believe that humans should be plants.” Kang interpreted this to be a defensive stance against the violence of the colonial period and took this as an inspiration to write her most successful work, Vegetarian. Vegetarian was turned into a movie that was one of only 14 selections (out of 1,022 submissions) for inclusion in the World Narrative Competition of the prestigious North American Film Fest. The film was also a critical success at the Pusan International Film Festival .

Work

In 2005 Mongolian Spot won the Lee Sang Literature Award although the rest of the series it and Vegetarian were written in were delayed by contractual problems Han’s work is suffused with a tragic sense and Han herself has noted that her greatest pleasure as a writer is when her work makes her readers sad. Her novella, Little Buddha also won the Korean Literature Award.

Works(Partial)

Black Deer (Geomeun Saeseum, 1998) Your Cold Hands (Geudae-ui Chagaun Son, 2002) The Story of a Crimson Flower (Bulgeunkkot Iyagi, 2003) Love in Yeosu (Yeosu-ui Sarang, 1995) My Woman's Fruit (Nae Yeoja-ui Yeolmae, 2000)