The Disaster Tourist (Left)
The Disaster Tourist, which won the 2021 Dagger Award, is an eco-thriller that skewers the dangers of capitalism with sharp humor. Yun Ko-eun is the first Asian artist to win the Dagger Award.
Children’s Literature: Cloud Bread
It’s not just a painting but a three-dimensional work made by hand and photographed with people and props in the background.
Korean literature has been increasing its presence in the global market since its potential was first recognized in 2010. Since then, numerous Korean writers have won prestigious global literary awards and achieved meaningful results in the publishing markets in various regions. Now, the world is paying keen attention to Korean literature. Korean literary works have captivated global readers with subject matters conveying unique and fresh sensibilities, coupled with serious themes and high artistic achievements.
Han Kang won the Man Booker International Prize for her short story The egetarian in 2016, and the Malaparte Prize, a prestigious literary award in Italy, for er novel Human Acts in 2017.
Yun Ko-eun won the prestigious 2021 CWA Crime Fiction in Translation Dagger Award for her novel The Disaster Tourist. The novel focuses on a travel agency that sells “disaster tour” products, and was lauded for offering the thrill of crime fiction and social criticism at the same time.
Omniscient Reader, a fantasy novel by the “web novel” writer Sing-Shong, is enjoying global popularity as one of the biggest global hits among Korean web novels. The novel ranked first on the web novel website Munpia in cumulative sales, Naver Series in cumulative downloads, as well as Naver Webtoon. In addition, it has been translated into Taiwanese, Chinese, and Thai.
The Vegetarian (Left)
Korea’s leading novelist Han Kang won the Man Booker International Prize, one of the world’s top three literary awards, for The Vegetarian.
Picture book: Summer
This unique picture book combines music, pictures, and story, with drawing as its main focus.
Korean Children’s literature has also been driving the Korean Wave by winning numerous awards worldwide. For example, Baek Hee-na, the author of Cloud Bread, won the globally renowned children’s literature award the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award (ALMA) in Sweden in 2020. All 13 of her books are popular across Asia, and have been translated into multiple languages, including the English version of Cloud Bread, published in 2011.
In 2022, Suzy Lee won the prestigious Hans Christian Andersen Award (HCAA, illustration section), which is often referred to as the Nobel prize for children’s literature. The HCAA was created in 1956 in commemoration of the 19th-century Danish children’s story writer Hans Christian Andersen. Lee won the prize for her work Summer, which also won her a Special Mention at the Bologna Ragazzi Awards in the fiction category.
