With author Han Kang becoming the first Asian female author to win the Nobel Prize in Literature on the 10th, movies based on her novels are also being reexamined. The possibility of other works by the author being made into movies is also growing.

○Movie ‘The Vegetarian’ a belated topic of conversation

On the 13th, the movie ‘The Vegetarian’, which is an adaptation of the author‘s 2007 novel ‘The Vegetarian’, ranked 18th on the Kinolights chart, a content integration platform. This is a ranking that surpassed the ENA drama ‘To My Harry’ starring Shin Hye-sun and Lee Jin-wook, and the popular entertainment show ‘I’m Single, Then Love Continues’.

The 2010 film ‘The Vegetarian’ is not currently streaming on any OTT service in Korea, but it made a splash on the charts due to a surge in searches following the author‘s Nobel Prize in Literature win.

‘The Vegetarian’, which tells the story of a woman who suddenly begins to refuse meat one day, is an independent film starring Chae Min-seo and Kim Yeo-jin. It was also screened at the Sundance International Film Festival, but failed at the box office due to disappointing reviews that it failed to properly capture the depth of the original work.

The 2011 film ‘Scar’, based on another novel by the author, ‘Baby Buddha’, is also belatedly attracting attention. This work depicts the precarious married life of a perfectionist news anchor and an emotionally dry woman, starring Park So-yeon and Jung Hee-tae, and was directed by Im Woo-sung, who created ‘The Vegetarian’.
○ Requests for a film adaptation of ‘The Boy Comes’… .

Fans have been requesting that more of the author’s works be made into films since winning the Nobel Prize in Literature. Along with ‘We Never Say Goodbye’, which deals with the Jeju April 3 Incident, ‘The Boy Comes’ is considered to be the work that contributed most to winning the Nobel Prize in Literature this year, and is considered to have the highest possibility of being made into a film.

‘The Boy Comes’ is based on the May 18 Gwangju Democratization Movement and tells the story of Dong-ho, a boy sacrificed in Gwangju in 1980, and the people surrounding him. In a 2019 survey on ‘Novels Wanted to Be Made into Movies’, it ranked first, and global group BTS members RM and V strongly recommended it. The interest of overseas fans in the novel is also high, which naturally leads to interest in the video content industry.

‘The Boy Comes’ was produced and performed as a play titled ‘Human Fugue’. When it premiered in 2019, it was recognized for its artistry, such as being selected as one of the ‘Best 3 Plays of the Year’ by the Korean Theater Critics Association, and the following year in 2020, it was staged once again thanks to the enthusiastic response from the audience.


Reporter Seungmi Lee smlee@donga.com