Han Kang, winner of the Nobel Literature Prize, is shocked by recent events in South Korea

Associated Press

STOCKHOLM (AP) — South Korean author Han Kang, this year’s winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, says she was shocked at this week’s martial law announcement in her home country. Han was awarded by the Nobel committee “for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.” She spoke to journalists at a news conference in Stockholm on Friday after days of political turmoil back home. She recalled how she studied martial law imposed in her country in 1979 for her book “Human Acts.” The book is set in 1980 in her birth city of Gwangju following a bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protesters that left around 200 people dead and hundreds of others injured.