The awarding of the Nobel Prize in Literature to Han Kang on Thursday stands as yet another validation of the outsize soft power of the South Korean cultural juggernaut.

上周四，韩江获得了诺贝尔文学奖，再次证明无比强大的韩国文化软实力。

Ms. Han is both the first South Korean and the first Asian woman to win the Nobel, the world’s most prestigious literary prize, in its 123-year history. Her achievement follows Bong Joon Ho’s best-picture Oscar for “Parasite” in 2020, as well as the broad popular success of television shows like Netflix’s “Squid Game” and K-pop acts like BTS and Blackpink.

诺贝尔文学奖是世界上最负盛名的文学奖项，在其123年的历史上，韩江是首位获得该奖项的韩国女性，也是首位获得该奖的亚洲女性。在她取得这一成就之前，奉俊昊在2020年凭借《寄生虫》(Parasite)获得了奥斯卡最佳影片奖，Netflix的《鱿鱼游戏》(Squid Game)等电视剧，以及“防弹少年团”(BTS)和“Blackpink”等韩国流行组合也获得了广泛的成功。

The win by Ms. Han, who is best known outside her home country for “The Vegetarian,” is fitting at a time when female novelists and poets from South Korea have flourished, particularly in translation, sending a wave of works into the hands of international readers.

韩江在国外最知名的作品是《素食者》(The Vegetarian)。如今，韩国女性小说家和诗人正处于全盛时期，向国际读者呈现了大量作品——尤其是通过翻译版，韩江的获奖可谓恰逢其时。

But while her victory was widely celebrated as a crowning cultural achievement for South Korea, what Ms. Han and these female writers represent is a form of rebellion against South Korean culture, which remains deeply patriarchal and often misogynistic.

然而，尽管她的胜利被广泛誉为韩国文化的最高成就，韩江和这些女作家所代表的却是对韩国文化的一种反抗，这种文化仍然深深根植于父权、时有厌女表现的观念。

Only one of the 10 heads of the country’s Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism has been a woman since it assumed its current name in 2008. Until Ms. Han’s triumph, South Korea’s male-dominated literary critics’ circles had long championed the poet Ko Un as the country’s most likely and deserving Nobel candidate. Before allegations of sexual abuse surfaced against him, local reporters would gather in front of his home when the Nobel announcement was imminent. Ms. Han never drew such crowds.

自2008年韩国文化体育观光部更名以来，该部的10位部长中只有一位是女性。在韩江获奖之前，以男性为主的韩国文学评论界长期以来一直推崇诗人高银，认为他是该国最有可能、也最有资格获得诺贝尔奖的候选人。在针对他的性虐待指控浮出水面之前，每逢诺贝尔奖宣布前夕，当地记者都会聚集在他家门前。韩江从来没有吸引过这么多的人。

韩江在海外最著名的作品是《素食者》。

For her and other female authors in South Korea, writing “is a form of dissent and a form of resistance,” said Bora Chung, a writer whose collection of short stories, “Cursed Bunny,” was published in English in 2022. Ms. Chung’s book was one of several by female writers recommended by Ms. Han herself in The New York Times last year.

对她和其他韩国女作家来说，写作“是一种异见和反抗的形式”，作家郑宝拉（音）说，她的短篇小说集《被诅咒的兔子》于2022年出版了英文版。去年，韩江本人在《纽约时报》上推荐了几位女性作家的作品，这本书就是其中之一。

South Korea has an obsession with the international recognition that comes with awards like Olympic golds and Nobel Prizes. Until Thursday, it had produced only one Nobel laureate: a former president, Kim Dae-jung, who won the Peace Prize in 2000 for his fight for democracy under military rule and his efforts to build reconciliation and peace with North Korea.

韩国痴迷于奥运会金牌和诺贝尔奖等奖项所带来的国际认可。在周四之前，韩国的诺贝尔奖得主只有一位：前总统金大中。2000年，他因在军事统治下争取民主，以及努力同朝鲜达成和解与和平而获得和平奖。

That Nobel and now the one for Ms. Han are both deeply tied to South Korea’s tumultuous modern history, which has been marked by the division of the Korean Peninsula, a war, military dictatorship and a long and often bloody struggle for democracy and labor rights.

当时与现在的诺贝尔奖都与韩国动荡不安的现代史密切相关，朝鲜半岛的分裂、战争、军事独裁以及为争取民主和劳工权利而进行的长期且经常伴随流血的斗争，都是这段历史的重要标志。

In South Korea, Ms. Han is best known for “Human Acts,” a novel about the massacre of democracy activists in Gwangju in 1980.

在韩国，韩江最出名的作品是《少年来了》(Human Acts)，这是一部关于1980年光州民主活动人士被屠杀的小说。

The government of Park Geun-hye, the conservative president of South Korea from 2013 until her impeachment in 2017, put Ms. Han on a “blacklist” of writers, artists and directors it considered unfriendly and barred from government-controlled support programs, according to Kang Yu-jung, an opposition lawmaker.

据反对党议员姜与正（音）称，韩国保守派总统朴槿惠的政府——从朴槿惠2013年上任到2017年被弹劾为止——将韩江列入其认为不友好的作家、艺术家和导演的“黑名单”，并禁止她参与政府控制的支持项目。

The list has never been made public, but Ms. Han was blackballed because the brutal crackdown chronicled in “Human Acts” was carried out by a past conservative dictatorship, Ms. Kang said. “We Do Not Part,” Ms. Han’s 2021 novel, discussed another civilian massacre that many conservative South Koreans did not want to see in public debate.

这份名单从未公开过，但姜与正说，韩江之所以被列入黑名单，是因为《少年来了》当中记载的残酷镇压是由过去的保守派独裁政权实施的。韩江2021年出版的小说《不做告别》(We Do Not Part)讨论了另一场针对平民的大屠杀，许多保守的韩国人不希望在公开辩论中看到这场屠杀。

“The Vegetarian,” Ms. Han’s most widely read book internationally, is a chronicle of violence at a more intimate scale, of a woman oppressed in her own home.

《素食者》是韩江在国际上最受欢迎的作品，记录了一名女性在自己家中受到的更私密的压迫。

Ms. Han has said she draws inspiration in her writing from questions raised by “human violence” throughout South Korea’s history. She said her “sense of guilt” over meat consumption, a key element of “The Vegetarian,” was linked to the massacre in Gwangju, her home city.

 韩江说，她的写作灵感来自韩国历史上“人类暴力”引发的问题。她说，她说，《素食者》的一个重要元素——她对肉类消费的“负罪感”与她的家乡光州发生的大屠杀有关。

韩国光州的万月墓地，纪念在民主运动中牺牲的人们。

Referring to her writing process for “Human Acts,” she said: “The feeling I had most often while writing the book was pain, an overwhelming pain. I cried almost every day when I wrote the novel.”

在谈到《少年来了》的写作过程时，她说：“我在写这本书时最常感受到的是痛苦，一种势不可挡的痛苦。写这本小说的时候，我几乎每天都在哭。”

On Friday, citing violence on a broader scale, Ms. Han’s novelist father, Han Seung-won, 84, told South Korean journalists that his daughter had decided not to hold a news conference discuss the Nobel.

上周五，韩江的小说家父亲、84岁的韩升源告诉韩国记者，因为更大范围的暴力，他的女儿决定不召开新闻发布会谈论诺贝尔奖。

“She told me that she did not want to celebrate at a time when people were dying everyday in the wars” in Ukraine and in the Middle East, Mr. Han was quoted as saying when he met reporters in southwestern South Korea.

“她告诉我，在（乌克兰和中东）每天都有人死于战争的时候，她不想庆祝，”韩国媒体援引韩升源在韩国西南会见记者时的话说。

While Ms. Han’s work tackles heavy historical freight, it can also be seen as feminist. In “The Vegetarian,” the protagonist’s decision to avoid meat can be read as an act of resistance against patriarchal systems.

韩江的作品涉及沉重的历史负担，但也可以被视为女权主义。在《素食者》中，女主人公不吃肉的决定可以被解读为反抗父权的行为。

With women still facing discrimination in politics, the business world and the news media in South Korea, literature is an outlet where they can express their power.

在韩国，女性在政界、商界和新闻媒体中仍然面临歧视，文学是她们表达自己力量的一个渠道。

“It’s one of the few spaces where you can be freed from gender,” said Krys Lee, a novelist who lives in Seoul. “You can write all of the ages and all genders.”

“这是少数几个可以不受性别影响的空间之一，”现居首尔的小说家克莉丝·李说。“任何年龄、任何性别都可以写。”

Other female writers said they were not surprised that it was a woman now representing South Korea’s literary power on the global stage.

其他女性作家表示，现在一位女性在全球舞台上代表了韩国的文学力量，这并不令她们感到惊讶。

“Literature, even when it was dominated by men, the strongest voices came from the most oppressed,” said Euny Hong, the author of “The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation Is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture.”

“即使是在男性主导的时代，文学中最强烈的声音也来自最受压迫的群体，”《韩国酷的诞生：一个国家如何通过流行文化征服世界》(The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation Is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture)一书的作者洪又妮（音）说。

“People in troubled situations or marginalized groups,” Ms. Hong said, “have to have a very clear and loud voice or they won’t be heard, and that has always been reflected in literature.”

“身处困境的人或被边缘化的群体，”洪又妮说，“必须发出非常清晰响亮的声音，否则就不会被听到，这一点在文学作品中一直有所体现。”

Female readers have also become more powerful in the South Korean literary market in recent years with the growing class of professional women, Ms. Lee, the novelist, said. The rise of activism against sexual harassment and assault internationally and within South Korea has also created a hunger for women’s voices.

小说家克莉丝·李说，近年来，随着职业女性群体的壮大，女性读者在韩国文学市场上的影响力也越来越大。国际上和韩国国内反对性骚扰和性侵犯活动的兴起，也引发了女性对发声的渴求。

Ms. Han comes “from a certain generation of women who grew up under a patriarchal system and also a country with a modern history of violence, and I think her work speaks to that,” Ms. Lee said.

克莉丝·李说，韩江“是父权制下长大的特定一代女性，也是在有暴力现代史的国家长大的女性，我认为她的作品反映了这一点”。

Many of the books by women that are being translated into English — including some that lean more commercial than strictly literary — have tackled what are often considered typical subjects for women, like motherhood or body image. These topics reflect the interests of many American and British readers.

许多被翻译成英文的女性作品——包括一些更倾向于商业而非严格意义上的文学作品——都涉及通常被视为女性范畴的典型主题，比如母性或身体形象。这些话题反映了许多美国和英国读者的兴趣。

Among the South Korean fiction that has resonated internationally has been “Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982,” a novel by Cho Nam-Joo about a young stay-at-home mother who suffers a psychotic break, and “Please Look After Mom” by Kyung-sook Shin, about a martyred mother who goes missing. That novel won the Man Asian Literary Prize in 2011.

在国际上引起共鸣的韩国小说包括赵南柱的《1982年出生的金智英》(Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982)和申京淑的《请照顾我妈妈》(Please Look After Mom)，后者讲述了一位牺牲自己的母亲走失的故事，在2011年获得了曼氏亚洲文学奖。

Still, readers seem to want more than overt feminist material.

然而，读者想要的似乎不仅仅是直白的女权主义素材。

“We’re all just excited to see different types of stories, and that also is reflected in the different genres that are being written and translated,” said Chi-Young Kim, who has translated numerous South Korean novels into English, including “Please Look After Mom.”

“看到不同类型的故事，我们都很兴奋，这也反映在正在创作和翻译的不同类型的故事上，”金志永（音）说。她曾将多部韩国小说翻译成英文，包括《请照顾我妈妈》。

韩江说，她从韩国历史上的“人类暴力”问题中汲取灵感。

“Thirty years ago, it was very literary work that was being translated into English,” Ms. Kim said. “And now you’re seeing sci-fi and fantasy and memoir being translated.”

“30年前，被翻译成英语的都是文学作品，”金志永说。“现在，你可以看到是科幻小说、奇幻小说和回忆录被译成英文。”

The biggest limitation, she said, is the number of translators. Government funding for cultural and arts education in schools has been declining in recent years.

她说，最大的限制是翻译人员的数量。近年来，政府对学校文化艺术教育的资助一直在减少。

“We just need more translators to be able to bring all the diversity and amazing breadth of Korean literature into English and other languages too,” Ms. Kim said.

“我们需要更多的翻译人员，把韩国文学的多样性和惊人广度也转化为英语和其他语言，”金志永说。

South Korea’s literary community and members of its international diaspora hope that Ms. Han’s Nobel victory can draw the spotlight to books in the way that films and television shows have made South Korean stories so popular in those mediums.

韩国文学界和旅居海外的韩国人希望，正如电影和电视剧让韩国故事在影视界大受欢迎一样，韩江的诺贝尔奖能把人们的注意力吸引到韩国的书籍上。

“Because of Korean movies first, people are recognizing that Koreans are very good storytellers,” Ms. Hong said.

“因为先看了韩国电影，人们开始认识到，韩国人非常善于讲故事，”洪又妮说。

Ms. Han’s award “will bring this new appreciation for Korean high culture because it’s a country that’s been known for a while for producing popular culture,” Ms. Hong said. “But it’s not just a nation of pop culture. It’s also a nation of ideas. So I think that’s sort of the revelation. Oh, Korea doesn’t just make films and bands. They also have an amazing literary richness.”

韩江的获奖“将带来对韩国高雅文化的新认识，因为这是一个以生产流行文化而闻名的国家，”洪又妮说。“但它不仅仅是一个流行文化的国家，也是一个充满思想的国家。所以我认为这可以打开人们的眼界。哦，韩国不只有电影和流行组合。他们还拥有丰富的文学作品。”