This course proposes a journey through the literary universe of Han Kang, a Korean writer and the first Asian woman to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2024. Here we will explore how her work moves towards spaces where light and darkness, love and pain, meet and embrace. As she pointed out in her Nobel Prize speech, her literature is a testimony of the constant movement between shadows and flashes, between losses and encounters, between silences and words. Over the course of five sessions, we will trace her literary evolution through her most significant works, from The vegetarian to Impossible to say goodbye.

Program:

Session 1: The literary universe of Han Kang
We will begin our journey through Han Kang's literary world, exploring his evolution from his early works to his consecration with the Nobel Prize. We will briefly examine The vegetarian, the work that made her internationally known, to understand how her writing moves between the limits of the human and the natural, violence and resistance. We will analyze her Nobel speech as a key to understanding her vision of literature as a path towards the light that emerges from darkness.

2 session: the greek class – Language and loss
We will dedicate this session to the greek class, a play that explores the relationship between language and loss. Through two characters – a woman who has aphasia, having lost her ability to speak, and a professor who is losing his sight – we will examine how the study of ancient Greek becomes a space where time, memory and healing meet.

3 session: Human acts – The light in the darkness
In this session we will address Human acts, a work that narrates the Gwangju Democratic Movement of 1980. We will explore how Han Kang constructs a polyphonic testimony where the voices of victims and survivors intertwine to illuminate not only the horror of violence, but also the moments of profound humanity and solidarity that emerged amidst the darkness.

4 session: Blanco – Between absence and presence
Blanco presents us with a meditation on the color that symbolizes both absence and presence, both emptiness and fullness. In this session, we will examine how Han Kang uses the color white to explore the spaces between life and death, between the visible and the invisible, transforming the pain of loss into a form of light that persists.

5 session: Impossible to say goodbye – Towards where the light blooms
The final session will be dedicated to Impossible to say goodbye, a work that intertwines the historical tragedy of the Jeju Event (1947-1954) with a profound reflection on life and nature. In this work, Han Kang connects the memory of one of the most painful episodes in Korea's past history with current history. We will analyze how the author weaves a narrative that unites the past and the present, the human and the natural, proposing a vision where historical pain and hope for the future meet in the eternal cycle of life.

The course is aimed at people interested in contemporary international literature and the new voices that are transforming our understanding of the world through literature. No prior knowledge of Korean literature or prior reading of the works is required.

Practical information:

Han Kang's works translated into Spanish:

The vegetarian (2007)
the greek class (희랍어 시간, 2011)
Human acts (The Last Supper, 2014)
Blanco (흰, 2017)
Impossible to say goodbye (작별하지 않는다, 2021)

Teacher:

Chaeyeon Park She is an associate professor in the Department of East Asian Studies at the Complutense University of Madrid, where she teaches Korean language and literature. She is also a professor of Korean language at Idiomas Complutense. She holds a BA and Master's degree in Hispanic Language and Literature from Korea University and a BA in Korean Language Teaching Studies from Cyber ​​University of Korea. Currently a PhD candidate in Literary Studies at the UCM, she researches Korean and Latin American literature, focusing on women's and marginal literature.