SEOUL — Han Kang, South Korea’s first winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, was slow to secure global acclaim, getting her first big international prize nine years after her best-known novel was published, once it had finally been translated into English.

The long wait for the translation of The Vegetarian, which won the 2016 Man Booker International prize, seemed to prove the observation of Ms. Han’s father, himself an award-winning novelist, that it was the kind of book that “goes straight into the drawer.”

Although the novel went on to be translated into dozens of languages, The Vegetarian had sold fewer than a million copies back home before Thursday’s announcement by the Swedish Academy, largely because of relatively low readership of literature among South Koreans and a languishing publishing industry.

Ms. Han’s compatriots were making up for lost time on Friday, mobbing bookstores for her novels, poetry, and short stories.

For some, Thursday’s surprise announcement — Ms. Han had not been on any of the major lists of likely Nobel winners — fueled hope that literature might get an injection of life in the land of K-pop and Squid Game. Despite a rich history, Korean literature is far less known abroad than Japanese or Chinese works.

“I grew up with Korean literature, which I feel very close to,” Ms. Han told an Academy official after the award was announced. “I hope this news is nice for Korean literature readers and my friends, writers.”

HAN KANG’S WORKS EXPLORE RECENT KOREAN HISTORY
Literary critic Oh Hyung-yup, a professor at Korea University, said Ms. Han’s award was a win for long-standing efforts to translate Korean literature for a global audience already familiar with South Korea’s buoyant pop culture.

Ms. Han, 53, the 18^th woman to win the Literature Prize, was born in Gwangju, where she lived until age 10, when her father, Han Seung-won, moved the family to the capital Seoul.

She was not in Gwangju to witness the massacre of hundreds of students and unarmed civilians by the military in May 1980, after a coup d’etat. But she explored the historical trauma of the crushed democratic uprising in her novel Human Acts.

The events carved a searing impression in her of the “conundrum” that people can be harrowingly violent but also risk their lives to help others, she said in 2021.

“When I try to talk about human beings, I think I have to get through Gwangju in May and, as always, there’s no way to get through it other than writing,” she said.

Asked to describe Ms. Han as a writer in one sentence, her father said: “She is a good young novelist who writes with poetic sensibility.”

Besides her father, a prolific writer whose novels are often set in his coastal hometown, her brother is also a novelist.

PRAISE FOR HAN KANG FROM K-POP STAR
After graduating from Yonsei University with a major in Korean literature, Ms. Han worked for a literary journal before making her debut in 1993 with a collection of poems, followed by a collection of short stories.

Private but not reclusive, the soft-spoken Ms. Han became a constant presence on South Korea’s literary scene, publishing novels as well as short-story collections and children’s books.

“It also surprised me that warm congratulations came like huge waves throughout the day. I am deeply grateful,” Ms. Han said in a statement issued late on Friday by her publisher, Changbi.

A representative said she did not plan to hold a press conference.

Ms. Han’s latest novel, We Do Not Part, published in Korean in 2021 and due out in English next year, is a chronicle of the pain and torment that followed another massacre — one carried out in the late 1940s to early 1950s in the name of rooting out communists on Jeju island.

Published in French last year, it won France’s Prix Medicis for foreign literature. Besides the Booker prize, Ms. Han has received Italy’s Premio Malaparte for Human Acts and Spain’s Archbishop Xoan de San Clemente Prize for The Vegetarian.

In a further sign that her books are gaining wider appeal, K-Pop supergroup BTS member V posted on Thursday: “I read Human Acts during military service … Congratulations!” — Reuters

RICKMANSWORTH, England — From Michael Jackson’s jackets to Noel Gallagher’s guitars, music memorabilia will head to auction next month in a sale estimated to raise around £2 million ($2.61 million).

Entertainment memorabilia auctioneer Propstore is offering more than 350 music items used by or that once belonged to megastars at its Nov. 15 sale, as part of a four-day event that will also sell film and television props and costumes.

Highlights from the music lots include a Jimi Hendrix master tape featuring four unreleased demo recordings in a box on which the musician wrote their titles.

Framed “Beat It” lyrics, handwritten by Jackson, will also go under the hammer, as will some of his jackets. A black and gold military style one has a price estimate of £200,000–£400,000 ($261,000–$522,000), while his red “Thriller” tour rehearsal jacket comes complete with multiple famous signatures.

“It has been not only signed by Michael, but on the inside, on the back lining, it’s signed by John Landis, who… directed the ‘Thriller’ video, and his wife, Deborah Landis, who designed the jacket for Michael to wear,” Propstore’s music specialist Mark Hochman told Reuters.

“(At the) end of the day, it’s a ‘Thriller’ jacket that Michael’s worn.”

Also for sale are 15 guitars previously owned and played by Noel Gallagher, in what Propstore says is the largest collection of Oasis guitars to come to auction. This includes his first while with the band, a cream Hohner JT60 (estimate £25,000–£50,000 pounds), it said.

“Oasis guitars do come up for auction… primarily they’re Noel’s guitars and they’re hugely sought after by collectors,” Mr. Hochman said.

“The (Oasis) reunion has taken that interest to a different level.”

Other lots are John Lennon’s 1962 Fawn JMI Vox AC15 Twin amp (£100,000–£200,000) and a synthesizer Prince used during the recording of “Purple Rain” (£50,000–£100,000 pounds). — Reuters