Name the writer from South Korea who has won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2024 ?
- (1)Nihon Hidankyo
- (2)David Baker
- (3)Annie Ernauxe
- (4)Han Kang
Answer
Why
Correct — option (4), Han Kang.
On 10 October 2024 the Swedish Academy announced that the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2024 is awarded to the South Korean author Han Kang, "for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life". She is the first South Korean author to receive the literature prize.
Han Kang was born in 1970 in Gwangju and moved to Seoul with her family at the age of nine. Her international breakthrough came with the novel The Vegetarian (2007; English translation 2015).
Her novel Human Acts (2014; English 2016) is built on the 1980 massacre in Gwangju, the city where she grew up.
The idea to remember: Literature 2024, Han Kang of South Korea; the other three names belong to a different prize or a different year.
Why the others are wrong
- (1)Nihon Hidankyo — Nihon Hidankyo is not a writer but a Japanese organisation of atomic bomb survivors, the Hibakusha. It won the Nobel Peace Prize 2024, announced in Oslo on 11 October 2024.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee honoured its efforts for a world free of nuclear weapons. The name shortens the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organisations, formed in 1956.
- (2)David Baker — David Baker of the University of Washington, Seattle, received one half of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2024, "for computational protein design", announced on 9 October 2024.
The other half went jointly to Demis Hassabis and John Jumper of Google DeepMind, "for protein structure prediction". Baker is a scientist from the USA, not a South Korean writer.
- (3)Annie Ernauxe — The name points to Annie Ernaux, the French author who won the Nobel Prize in Literature 2022, announced on 6 October 2022.
The prize category matches, but the year and the country do not. The 2024 literature laureate, and the South Korean in the options, is Han Kang.
Concept
Alfred Nobel's will created prizes in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature and Peace. The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel was added in 1968.
Each prize has its own awarding body. The Swedish Academy chooses the literature laureate; the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences chooses Physics, Chemistry and Economic Sciences; the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet chooses Medicine; the Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo chooses Peace.
A prize can be shared by up to three people, and the Peace Prize can also go to an organisation, as it did in 2024.
RPSC's 2024 syllabus lists "Persons, Places and Institutions in News" under Current Affairs. The 2024 prizes were announced between 7 and 14 October 2024, less than four months before the exam.
The Nobel bio-bibliography describes The Vegetarian as a novel in three parts. Its protagonist, Yeong-hye, decides not to eat meat, and her choice is forcibly rejected by her husband and her authoritarian father.
The Vegetarian, in Deborah Smith's English translation, won the Man Booker International Prize in 2016.
For Indian readers the literature prize has a familiar anchor: Rabindranath Tagore received it in 1913.
Key facts
- The Swedish Academy announced the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature for South Korean author Han Kang on 10 October 2024.
- Her prize motivation: "for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life".
- Han Kang was born in Gwangju in 1970; her novel Human Acts is built on the 1980 massacre in that city.
- Nihon Hidankyo, a Japanese organisation of atomic bomb survivors formed in 1956, won the Nobel Peace Prize 2024.
- Chemistry 2024 went half to David Baker and half jointly to Demis Hassabis and John Jumper.
Annie Ernaux, printed as option (3), won the literature prize in 2022.
Study next
Common traps
- Picking a 2024 laureate from the wrong category. Nihon Hidankyo won Peace and David Baker shared Chemistry; neither won Literature.
- Picking the right category from the wrong year. Annie Ernaux won the literature prize in 2022.
- Reading 'Nihon Hidankyo' as a person's name. It is an organisation of Hibakusha, the survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.
A question can name a laureate and ask for the prize category, the year or the country. A question can also quote a prize motivation and ask who received it, or list laureates against categories and ask which pairing is correct.
Related PYQs
UnlockIAS will link similar questions from RAS Pre 2013 here once that paper is published on this site.
Practice
- practice — not a real PYQ
The Nobel Peace Prize 2024 was awarded to Nihon Hidankyo. What is Nihon Hidankyo?
- (a)A Japanese organisation of atomic bomb survivors
- (b)A South Korean human rights lawyer
- (c)A Japanese novelist writing on the Second World War
- (d)A United Nations agency on nuclear energy
Answer(1) — The Norwegian Nobel Committee describes it as a grassroots movement of atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, formed in 1956. It is an organisation, so options (2) and (3), which describe individuals, fail; option (4) fails because it is not a UN body. - practice — not a real PYQ
Which of the following pairs of a 2024 Nobel laureate and prize category is correctly matched?
- (a)Han Kang – Peace
- (b)David Baker – Chemistry
- (c)Nihon Hidankyo – Literature
- (d)Geoffrey Hinton – Chemistry
Answer(2) — David Baker received half of the 2024 Chemistry prize for computational protein design. Han Kang won Literature, not Peace; Nihon Hidankyo won Peace, not Literature; Geoffrey Hinton shared Physics, not Chemistry.