Han Kang calls hatred 'a challenge we must overcome,' sees hope in shared awareness

Nobel Prize-winning author Han Kang described the deepening hatred spreading across South Korea and around the world as "a challenge we must overcome."

Speaking with South Korean journalists at the 80th Avignon Festival on Wednesday (local time), Han said figuring out how to overcome hatred "is an important task for all of us." She added that "this is the moment when we must all put our heads together and think about how to change course in this age of hatred."

She added, however, that "the very fact that we recognize hatred as a problem is a very good thing," saying she believed there was hope in the shared understanding that hatred is not natural but wrong.

Han also connected the issue of hatred to the recent controversy surrounding the Baejai High School baseball team.

Some players on the team drew sharp criticism on June 29 during a game against Gwangju Jeil High School after chanting slogans — including "Let's go, let's go, let's go to Starbucks" and "Tank Day" — widely condemned as mocking the May 18 pro-democracy uprising.

"Teacher friends of mine who work in education are also wrestling deeply with this," Han said. "They ask themselves, 'What can we do?' and 'How did we, as the older generation, end up failing like this?'"

She stressed that significant incidents like this should not simply pass amid shock and surprise. "If this incident is sending us some kind of signal, we need to capture the problem that has surfaced and all think together about how to move forward," she said.

Han also warned against letting one shock be buried by the next. "One shock covers another, and then the next shock covers the one before — being swept along like that doesn't seem right," she said, urging society to treat such events not as passing controversies to be consumed but as occasions for deeper reflection.

Holding her first public press briefing with South Korean media since the 2024 Nobel Prize ceremony, Han said she had honestly found the attention burdensome. "That's why I kept a low profile for a while, but it feels like interest has died down quite a bit now, so my heart feels a little lighter," she said.

The Avignon Festival organizing committee selected Korean as its official guest language this year to mark the 140th anniversary of diplomatic ties between South Korea and France, and invited Han to take part in an "In Conversation with the Author" session on Sunday.

The festival's official program also included an Italian theatrical production and a French director's reading performance, both based on Han's novel "We Do Not Part," which deals with the Jeju April 3 Incident. French actor Isabelle Huppert and Korean actor Lee Hye-young participated as readers, and Han herself joined part of the performance.

Han described the reading performance as "a stage where you can savor not only the sensations and emotions the sentences create, but also the voices, movements, and expressions of the actors." She said it was meaningful in that "people who have only read 'We Do Not Part' as a book can experience the work in a different way."

A reading performance of "We Do Not Part" is also scheduled to be staged at the Seoul International Performing Arts Festival in October.