President Lee Jae-myung on Tuesday praised author Han Kang for winning the fiction category of the National Book Critics Circle Award, saying she has "once again proven the depth and dignity of Korean literature to the world" following her Nobel Prize in Literature last year.
"I am truly proud," Lee said.
Han's novel *We Do Not Part* was selected as the fiction winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award on Tuesday. The award is one of the three most prestigious literary prizes in the United States, alongside the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. It marks the first time a novel originally written in Korean has won in the category.
"It is all the more meaningful because this is the first time a Korean work has won in the fiction category," the president wrote on his X (formerly Twitter) account Tuesday afternoon.
"The winning work *We Do Not Part* is a novel that sublimated the tragedy of the Jeju April 3 Incident, a dark chapter in our modern history, into a narrative of human dignity and memory," he said. "It delivered deep resonance by poetically unraveling a painful history."
He added, "I expect that our artists will stride confidently toward a broader stage, following the new literary horizon that the author has opened."
