Park Han-sol reports on Korea's financial regulators, along with fintech and insurance. She previously wrote about the art world, from biennales and exhibitions to fairs and auctions, with a focus on Seoul and the figures shaping the scene. Before joining The Korea Times, she spent a year at ABC News' Seoul bureau, contributing to coverage of major Asia-Pacific events.
Han Kang's 'Light and Thread' paints intimate portrait of novelist beyond her writing desk
Han Kang, the 2024 Nobel Prize laureate in literature / Courtesy of Nobel Prize Outreach
By Park Han-sol
Latest prose, poetry collection marks first publication since her historic Nobel win
“After having lived a little more / When I stand at the edge of death / Will I be able to think / That I truly held life tight (through writing).”
So begins “After Having Lived a Little More,” a contemplative two-page essay that drifts between lyrical poetry and prose, by Han Kang. This brief meditation on the act of writing graces the final pages of her latest book, “Light and Thread,” her first publication since winning the historic Nobel Prize in Literature last October.
“Light and Thread” gathers 12 essays and poems — some previously published, others unveiled for the first time — paired with black-and-white photographs captured by Han herself. The 172-page volume draws its title from the writer’s Nobel lecture, delivered on Dec. 7 at the Swedish Academy in Stockholm.
The book presents ample opportunity to revisit her stirring Nobel Week speech, as it includes the full text of both her Nobel lecture and her banquet address, “In the Darkest Night.” In the speech, she describes writing as a worthwhile “tradeoff” — an exchange between her personal life and the way it allows her to “delve into, and dwell in, the questions I feel are imperative and urgent.”
The cover of Han Kang's latest prose and poetry collection titled "Light and Thread" / Courtesy of Moonji Publishing
These questions have taken many forms throughout her three-decade career, culminating in masterpieces like “The Vegetarian,” “Human Acts” and “We Do Not Part”: Can the past help the present? Can the dead save the living? Why is the world so violent and painful — and yet, how can it be so beautiful? What does it mean to belong to the species called human? And to what degree must we love in order to remain human to the end?
Beyond such sweeping literary concerns, however, “Light and Thread” also paints a far more intimate portrait of the novelist, most notably through her three previously unpublished essays: “North-Facing Garden,” “Garden Diary” and “After Having Lived a Little More.”
In 2019, Han purchased her first home — a single-story "hanok" (Korean house) tucked away in a quiet pedestrian alley in the Seochon neighborhood of central Seoul. With a tiny yard, it's a place she calls "an introverted house."
She decided to transform a corner of the yard into a modest garden — a north-facing one, at that. Because the space received no direct sunlight, she had to use eight tabletop mirrors to catch and reflect light onto her leafy children: lilac, August lily, maple and snowball tree.
Since she had to reposition the mirrors every 15 minutes or so on sunny days, while the sun was up, her perception of it began to change.
“In the residential complexes where I had lived before,” she writes in her essay “North-Facing Garden,” “sunlight was like a guest who made incomplete visits again and again” — slipping in awkwardly through windows, draping itself clumsily across a corner of a room, then vanishing once more behind the unyielding concrete walls.
But here, in her north-facing garden, she was able to trace and be mindful of its every movement. “On days when I gave light to the trees, I had to spend hours in a rush to keep pace with the sun’s motion … So I came to feel, with my body, the speed at which the Earth spins.”
Han Kang signs the guest book at the Nobel Foundation in Stockholm, Dec. 12, 2024. Courtesy of Nobel Prize Outreach
Such tender and observant reflections, born from caring for her small plot of land, offer a quiet current of Han’s thoughts beyond the confines of her writing desk.
It was while tending the garden, on April 26, 2021, that she completed her novel “We Do Not Part,” a project that had taken her seven whole years.
She remembers slipping a USB flash drive containing the finished manuscript into the pocket of her jeans and walking the entire evening with it.
A photo of a poem penned by eight-year-old Han Kang in 1979 appears on the very last page of "Light and Thread." Courtesy of Moonji Publishing
On the very last page of “Light and Thread” appears a small photograph. It features a handwritten, dust-gathered poem Han wrote as an 8-year-old, an accidental discovery she referenced during her Nobel lecture.
“Where is love? / It is inside my thump-thumping beating chest. / What is love? / It is the gold thread connecting between our hearts.”
In addition to this latest prose and poetry collection, readers in Korea can look forward to one more offering from Han this year. She is currently putting the final strokes on her next novel — the work that will complete her so-called “Winter Trilogy.”
The new novel will be atmospherically linked to her two previous short stories: “While a Snowflake Melts,” where a surreal encounter with a late colleague from a magazine company hangs in the air, and “Farewell,” the tale of a woman who mysteriously turns into a snowman on a cold, whispering day.