Distance between You and Me
Every heart holds a quiet ode to someone—a figure whose journey feels personal even in its distance, who leaves an imprint simply by sharing a moment in time and space. For me, that someone is Han Kang, the Nobel Prize Laureate of 2024. As autumn bleeds into winter on a quiet day after the Nobel Prize announcement, I sit at my desk, reflecting on our fleeting yet resonant encounters.
I am Jin-ho Kim, a writer and editor. In 2017, when I began my creative writing degree at Seoul Institute of the Arts, Han Kang was a professor within the department. Although she was slowly stepping down from the podium that year, leaving no opportunity for direct interaction in the creative seminars she ran, I recall glimpsing her on campus or catching sight of her teaching senior students through the narrow crack of a classroom door.
That distant memory was unlike any classroom scene I knew. Unlike the typical arrangement where desks and chairs are tightly packed in neat rows around a central podium, the creative seminar had a different setup. It was like a gathering around a campfire—organic, intimate, alive. The lecturer and students formed a loose circle, defying academic formality, creating a space without hierarchy or hidden corners. At the centre, an invisible gravity pulled every gaze inward.
I first encountered Han Kang's works during a creative seminar reading session in my first year of university. Despite her already considerable fame, my childish desire to discover ‘my own author’ had kept me from reading her works. Perhaps for that reason, her novella ‘While a Snowflake Melts’ remains my lasting first impression of her, an image I’ll carry with me for a long time.
This piece is a subjective introduction, woven around that singular book, not yet translated. This is my humble ode to Han Kang—a quiet celebration of her extraordinary achievement and a gentle nudge to myself to persist along my literary journey.
Snow in Korean - ‘눈(nun)’
Korea is geographically located in the mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, where the four seasons are relatively distinct. As such, it shares the seasonal sensibilities unique to East Asian countries, where winter and snow function as quintessential metaphors for the cycle of life. That imagery of snow frequently appears in the works of Han Kang.
This likely stems from the unique sensibility of native Korean speakers toward the word ‘눈’ (nun). In Korean, ‘눈’ can mean both ‘eye’ or ‘gaze’ (目), and also refer to the phenomenon of ‘snow’ (雪). This linguistic duality creates a profound connection between observing snowflakes and exchanging gazes, forming the thematic foundation of 'While a Snowflake Melts'.
The novel begins on a winter night when the protagonist, a middle-aged playwright, receives an unexpected visit from the spirit of a deceased acquaintance: her former supervisor at a magazine company she had worked for 17 years ago. Having lost contact over the years, she learned of his death only much later. Puzzled by the sudden visit of the spirit, she sits with him, discussing her struggles with writing at the time.
From here, the protagonist’s predicament deepens both within and outside the play she is attempting to write. Originally conceived to conclude with ‘peace,’ the play begins to take an unexpected turn, leaving her unable to continue. She then learns of her former supervisor's hardships during their years apart—his struggles, illness, and lonely death. The protagonist grieves not only for his suffering and her delayed knowledge of his passing but also for her inability to truly understand his pain. She realises she remains an outsider to his struggles, disconnected from his experience.
Her lament takes the form of creative paralysis, represented in her play by a single snowflake resting on the crown of a suffering figure—a snowflake that refuses to melt. This snowflake symbolises the lingering presence of the deceased, whose pain persists in the lives of those left behind, refusing to dissipate easily. Paradoxically, at the very point where her writing halts, the protagonist finds herself standing in the snow, once again wishing for ‘peace.’ In the final scene, she confronts the impossibility of writing, and in admitting her inability, she meets the gaze of the snowflake suspended in the void.
At first glance, this snow-filled scene may seem puzzling. Yet, snow itself offers an apt metaphor for literature. Snow is often described as pure, but that is merely its outward appearance. To form a single snowflake, impure particles or dust-like nuclei of condensation are essential. Just as snow extends hexagonal branches infinitely, creating self-replicating fractals around the impurities of reality, trapping air layers within, and reflecting light in all directions to appear white, so too does literature centre itself on the dust-like fragments of human stories and pain, weaving connection and meaning out of imperfection and complexity.
‘Eye’ or ‘gaze’ also represents the act of seeing—the beginning and end of an event. To witness something with our eyes is to become entangled in it, and once entangled, we cannot look away. Snow, as a ‘crystal,’ symbolises an embrace of landscapes too vast for human arms to encompass. As a ‘gaze,’ it carves a path for emotional transmission while simultaneously evoking the ethics of the observer.
Han Kang elevates this ‘gaze’ into an ethical dimension, presenting it to the reader as white snow. Through this lens, her novel moves beyond the first-person ‘I’ to touch the distant suffering of others, urging us to look beyond ourselves and witness pain with empathy and responsibility.
From 'I' to 'You', and to 'Us'
A poet once said that writing should progress from ‘I’ to ‘you,’ and eventually to ‘us.’ Though I didn't fully understand these words back then, I believe I've found a faint clue in Han Kang's novels.
The Nobel Prize in Literature has always been, for me, an opportunity to read the painstaking translations of those dedicated to rendering foreign languages into words I could understand. Through such readings, I’ve often felt the impossibility of translation yet struck by the universal feelings conveyed despite that impossibility. Now, it seems to be our turn, a chance to share Korean novels with the world.
Like a single snowflake making its way to distant lands, the language of literature travels slowly. Yet it is this gradual journey, with its own pace and depth, that gives meaning to the act of sharing across languages. By exchanging what can never be fully translated, we connect on a larger stage and paradoxically find freedom from the prison of our native tongue. I believe that the literary achievements realised in the language of one era secure the depth and breadth of language for everyone living in that era. Surely, Han Kang’s novels contain struggles that might be personal or known only to her. Yet the achievements borne of those struggles belong to everyone who lives alongside her.
I hope that the pain she writes about in her novels falls like a peaceful snowflake, even in faraway lands inhabited by those most removed from that pain. As we live under the weight of war today, more than ever, we are in a time when that peaceful snowflake is desperately needed.
I write this on a Winter day when not a single snowflake has fallen. Congratulations to Han Kang on the Nobel Prize Award. And thank you. We now live within your novels.