Korean authors and the International Booker Prize: In 2005-2025, 3% of nominees were Korean; fully 8% of post-2016 shortlist Korean

[Peter]

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With the International Booker Prize for 2025 now over (winner announced in late-May 2025), we now have ten years of complete data for this contest since its re-framing in 2015 to focus entirely on translated fiction.

Between 2016 and 2025, there have been 130 longlisted books, 60 shortlisted books, and 10 winners. Reaching back to 2005, the total number of nominees rises to 210 (175 of whom wrote in languages other than English).

There have been 7 Korean books nominated for the International Booker Prize, all since 2016.

The International Booker Prize has been associated with Korean-to-English translation since the surprise win by The Vegetarian by Han Kang. The selection by the 2016 judges, to not only nominate Vegetarian but to give it the top prize, was unexpected.

Some have seen the Vegetarian choice as a conscious correction for preceding years' conspicuous absence of Korean literature in international awards; many Korean nominees have followed.

I could go on, but let me just let the data do the talking:

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INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE NOMINEES, WINNERS, and KOREAN AUTHORS/BOOKS AMONG THEM

- 2005: 0 of 18 longlist nominees Korean

- 2007: 0 of 15 longlist nominees Korean

- 2009: 0 of 14 longlist nominees Korean

- 2011: 0 of 13 longlist nominees Korean

- 2013: 0 of 10 longlist nominees Korean

- 2015: 0 of 10 longlist nominees Korean

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(See note, below, on "the 2015 re-framing of the International Booker Prize.")
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2016
- 1 of 13 longlist nominees Korean ( The Vegetarian , Han Kang / tr. Deborah Smith [GR ratings: 310,070 / avg.: 3.64]);
- 1 of 6 shortlist nominees Korean (Vegetarian);
- Winner: Vegetarian.

Shortlisted novels' authors' countries and text origin-languages in 2016: South Korea [Korean] (winner); Angola [Portuguese]; Italy [Italian]; Turkey [Turkish]; Austria [German]; PRC-China [Chinese].

- Africa: 1
- Europe: 2
- East Asia: 2
- Latin America: 0
- South Asia: 0
- Middle East: 1

(Note 1: The number of ratings for Vegetarian has ballooned since the surprise awarding of the Nobel Prize in Literature announcement in October 2024. As of May 2020, four years after the International Booker win, Vegetarian had 85,000 GR ratings and a 3.58 average; today it has 310,000 ratings and a 3,64 average.)

(Note 2: The International Booker Prize shot Han Kang (and Deborah Smith) to sudden fame. But Vegetarian is, ironically, the lowest-rated on GR of her books. By word-of-mouth I've heard more people tell me they disliked it than liked it. Most have said they did like Human Acts, though, and others.)

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2017
- 0 of 13 longlist nominees Korean;
- 0 of 6 shortlist nominees Korean;
- Winner: A Horse Walks into a Bar , by David Grossman [Israel, Hebrew] / tr. Jessica Cohen (GR ratings: 15,375 / avg.: 3.52).

Shortlisted novels' authors' countries and text origin-languages in 2017: Israel [Hebrew] (winner); France [French]; Norway [Norwegian]; Denmark [Danish]; Israel [Hebrew]; Argentina [Spanish].

- Africa: 0
- Europe: 4
- East Asia: 0
- Latin America: 0
- South Asia: 0
- Middle East: 2

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2018
- 1 of 13 longlist nominees Korean ( The White Book , Han Kang / tr. Deborah Smith [GR ratings: 29,115 / avg.: 3.82);
- 1 of 6 shortlist nominees Korean (White Book);
- Winner: [book:Flights|36885304], by Olga Tokarczuk [Poland, Polish] / tr. Jennifer Croft (GR ratings: 35,570 / avg.: 3.75).

Shortlisted novels' authors' countries and text origin-languages in 2018: Poland [Polish] (winner); France [French]; South Korea [Korean]; Hungary [Hungarian]; Spain [Spanish]; Iraq [Arabic].

- Africa: 0
- Europe: 4
- East Asia: 1
- Latin America: 0
- South Asia: 0
- Middle East: 1

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2019
- 1 of 13 longlist nominees Korean ( At Dusk , Hwang Sok-yong / tr. Sora Kim-Russell [GR ratings: 2,051 / avg.: 3.68])
- 0 of 6 shortlist nominees Korean
- Winner: Celestial Bodies , by Jokha Alharthi [Oman, Arabic] / tr. Marilyn Booth (GR ratings: 16,743 / avg.: 3.41).

Shortlisted novels' authors' countries and text origin-languages in 2019: Oman [Arabic] (winner); France [French]; Germany [German]; Poland [Polish]; Colombia [Spanish]; Chile [Spanish].

- Africa: 0
- Europe: 3
- East Asia: 0
- Latin America: 2
- South Asia: 0
- Middle East: 1

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2020
- 0 of 13 longlist nominees Korean
- 0 of 6 shortlist nominees Korean
- Winner: The Discomfort of Evening Marieke Lucas Rijneveld [Netherlands, Dutch] / tr. Michele Hutchison (GR ratings: 36,606 / avg.: 3.45).

Shortlisted novels' authors' countries and text origin-languages in 2020: Netherlands [Dutch] (winner); Iran [Persian]; Argentina [Spanish]; Germany [German]; Mexico [Spanish]; Japan [Japanese].

- Africa: 0
- Europe: 2
- East Asia: 1
- Latin America: 2
- South Asia: 0
- Middle East: 1

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2021
- 0 of 13 longlist nominees Korean
- 0 of 6 shortlist nominees Korean
- Winner: At Night All Blood is Black David Diop [France, French] / tr. Anna Moschovakis (GR ratings: 26,699 / avg.: 3.81).

Shortlisted novels' authors' countries and text origin-languages in 2021: France [French] (winner); Argentina [Spanish]; Chile [Spanish]; Denmark [Danish]; Russia [Russia]; France [French].

- Africa: 0
- Europe: 4
- East Asia: 0
- Latin America: 2
- South Asia: 0
- Middle East: 0

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2022
- 2 of 13 longlist nominees Korean ( Cursed Bunny , Bora Chung [South Korea] / tr. Anton Hur [GR ratings: 36,848 / avg.: 3.76]; and Love in the Big City , Sang Young Park [South Korea] / tr. Anton Hur [GR ratings: 15,673 / avg.: 3.68]);
- 1 of 6 shortlist nominees Korean (Cursed Bunny).
- Winner: Tomb of Sand, Geetanjali Shree [India, "mostly Hindi"] tr. Daisy Rockwell (GR ratings: 3,694 / avg.: 3.68).

Shortlisted novels' authors' countries and text origin-languages in 2022: India [Hindi] (winner); South Korea [Korean]; Norway [Norwegian]; Japan [Japanese]; Argentina [Spanish]; Poland [Polish].

- Africa: 0
- Europe: 2
- East Asia: 2
- Latin America: 1
- South Asia: 1
- Middle East: 0

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2023
- 1 of 13 longlist nominees Korean ( Whale , Cheon Myeong-kwan [South Korea] / tr. Chi-Young Kim [GR ratings: 4,050 / avg.: 3.94]);
- 1 of 6 shortlist nominees Korean (Whale);
- Winner: Time Shelter , Georgi Gospodinov [Bulgaria] / tr. Angela Rodel (GR ratings: 24,665 / avg.: 3.75).

Shortlisted novels' authors' countries and text origin-languages in 2023: Bulgaria [Bulgarian] (winner); Spain [Catalan]; South Korea [Korean]; France [French]; Cote D'Ivoire [French]; Mexico [Mexican].

- Africa: 1
- Europe: 3
- East Asia: 1
- Latin America: 1
- South Asia: 0
- Middle East: 0

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2024
- 1 of 13 longlist nominees Korean ( Mater 2-10 , Hwang Sok-yong [South Korea] / tr. Sora Kim-Russell & Youngjae Josephine Bae [GR ratings: 651 / avg.: 3.69]);
- 1 of 6 shortlist nominees Korean (Mater 2-10);
- Winner: Kairos , Jenny Erpenbeck [Germany] / tr. Michael Hofmann (GR ratings: 21,609 / avg.: 3.36)

Shortlisted novels' authors' countries and text origin-languages in 2024: Germany [German] (winner); Argentina [Spanish]; Sweden [Swedish]; South Korea [Korean]; Netherlands [Dutch]; Brazil [Portuguese].

- Africa: 0
- Europe: 3
- East Asia: 1
- Latin America: 2
- South Asia: 0
- Middle East: 0

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2025
- 0 of 13 longlist nominees Korean
- 0 of 6 shortlist nominees Korean
- Winner: Heart Lamp: Selected Stories , Banu Mushtaq [India; Kannada language] / tr. Deepa Bhasthi (GR ratings: 2,210 / avg.: 3.83 ).

Shortlisted novels' authors' countries and text origin-languages in 2025: India [Kannana] (winner); France [French]; Italy [Italian]; Japan [Japanese]; France [French]; Denmark [Danish].

- Africa: 0
- Europe: 4
- East Asia: 1
- Latin America: 0
- South Asia: 1
- Middle East: 0

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SUMMARY

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2005-2025, cumulative:

--- Of 210 nominees (around 175+ being writers working in languages other than English), 7 have been Korean (working in Korean);

--- 16 winners (1 Korean: 2016)

-- 3.3% of the longlist nominees between 2005 and 2025 were Korean (zero before 2016); rising to 4.0% if including only writers writing in languages other than English (7/175) (pre-2016 nominees for this UK prize were often "non-British writers" writing in English).

-- For 2005-2025, Japanese authors got 6 nominations; Chinese, 8 nomination; Koreans, 7 nomination; India, 6 to 8 nominations (depending on how you classify Salman Rushdie and one or two others of South Asia origin active in the West; by post-20165 standards, only original-non-English works would be counted so they'd be excluded.)

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2016-2025, cumulative (since the refocus of the prize):

--- Of 130 longlist nominees, 7 were Korean (2016, 2018, 2019, 2022[x2], 2023, 2024). Korean-original works nominated 6 of 10 years (in one year, two books).

--- Of 60 shortlist nominees, 5 were Korean (2016, 2018, 2022[x1], 2023, 2024). Korean-original works nominated in five of the ten years, 2016-2025.

-- A total of 9 East Asian works were shortlist nominees (15% of total), making Korean works (5) the majority of East Asian works.

--- Of 10 winners, 1 was Korean (2016).

Rates
- 5.4% of longlist nominees, 2016-2025, were Korean;
- 8.3% of shortlist nominees, 2016-2025, were Korean;
- The longlist-to-shortlist rate for Korean nominees is an impressive "70%" (5/7; only two longlisted Korean books failed to make the shortlist their year). The overall longlist-to-shortlist rate is only "46%" (60/130).

Shortlist regional total, 2016-2025 (60 total):
- Africa: 2 (3%)
- Europe: 31 (52%)
- East Asia: 9 (15%; of which 5 Korean!)
- Latin America: 10 (17%)
- South Asia: 2 (3%)
- Middle East: 6 (10%; of which 2 Hebrew, 2 Arabic, 1 Persian, 1 Turkish).

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NOTE on the 2015 re-framing of the International Booker Prize

Up to 2015, they had previously included any non-British writers (in that sense "international"), writing in any language including English. The award changed its working definition of "international," starting with the May 2016 award, to:

(1.) solely deal with translated-to-English works;

(2.) it would "highlight the work of translators" and give equal credit and publicity to both author and translator (and split prize-money equally between the two);

(3.) it would (in theory) be solely about a single work, by a single author-translator pair, and not about a body of work or any other factors (up to 2015, it had been for a body of work);

(4.) there would be a standardized process with a rotating set of judges that selected a thirteen-book longlist, a six-book shortlist, and a winner announced in May of each year;

(5.) it would be a yearly prize.

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Commentary to follow.

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[Peter]

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Some comments:

Question. What percent of world literature is produced in Korean?

By world literature, I mean simply "literature produced in the world" and which is eligible for this International Booker prize, i.e., which is produced originally in a language other than English.

(I do not mean the posited genre Global Literature. Although that concept is at play, somewhere, with any contest such as this; and 2020s-era Korean-to-English translations certainly show certain signs of the influence of Global Literature.)

Answer. Korean Literature could be <1%, or as high as around 2%+, of recent decades' world literature, it seems to me.

(Multiple factors will affect the denominator: total population that is above some age, say, age 35; literacy-rates and education-rates; per-capita GDPs; and a multiplier on those things for cultural literary tradition. // note: South Korea's share of global-GDP today is 1.6%, and about 2.0% of global GDP when excluding English-speaking countries.)

Koreans' recent representation in the International Booker Prize nominees, though -- at 5-8% in the period 2016-2025 (see above) -- far exceeds their likely share of world literature production. By at least several times over, maybe by up to 10x (!), they are over-represented in the International Booker Prize after a good decade's worth of data.

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What do we make of Korean authors' over-representation in the International Booker Prize (starting "with a bang" in May 2016 with the surprise win for The Vegetarian)?

Did Korean literature suddenly get better around the late 2010s? That's not likely.

Was it always good but only began to be noticed in the late 2010s? That seems more likely, but still unsatisfying to me.

Might there something special about the International Booker Prize which might tend to over-represent Korean literature? If so, what might that be or those things be?

And/or, is there something special about the late-2010s/early-2020s period which might tend to favor Korean authors?

A less-pleasant question. To what extent might the Korean side be "gaming the system" here, as by stacking submissions and greasing the wheels of the process, in ways, or with resources or energies, that are not necessarily available to other authors and translators from other regions?

I quote from the criteria for submission for the prize:

"Only publishers based in the UK and/or Ireland can submit entries to the prize. Authors, translators and agents are not permitted to enter the prizes directly."

If South Korean government money (subsidies, public-diplomacy efforts), and the spirit of Korea Inc boosterism generally, finds its way to British publishers, they'd be able to submit more nominees for consideration than the market might otherwise support. That could (have) influence(d) this data-set. The Koreans could get more hits, here, by taking more shots.

Anyone who knows South Korean culture in recent decades knows well the intense focus on international awards, on any kind of international rankings. On being seen as highly ranked. It's to a degree generally not seen in socioeconomically comparable Western countries, at least in my experience.

Many Westerners, when first encountering this kind of thing in Korea, are put off. It seems -- what -- uncouth?

Western critics of the kind I allude to will say that intense focus on rankings tends to create, reinforce, perpetuate, a "Form Over Substance" problem. The award is its own merit.

Imagine an individual who gets really into the Olympics in an intense way, trading sleep to watch events, tracking the medal tables, cheering on his country's athletes. But imagine an entire culture functions like that all the time, Olympics or not. I never much sensed a mood of that kind. Bluster about loudmouths shouting "USA Number One" or some-such, it's just surface-froth; in my memory, Substance over Form was taken for granted as a default.

Koreans, I think, would tend to not believe a Westerner saying these things; many, in my experience, would incline to make an insinuation of hypocrisy, depending on how rude or confrontational they wanted to be in the moment.

Koreans themselves, I imagine, would say:

Hey, there's nothing wrong with trying to "game a system," if you must call it that. Others are out there doing the same. And we deserve our place in the Sun! This list of International Literature, the prize-nominees. it's too centered around Western people with over half the shortlisted books being from Europe and many of the others tracing to Western influence. This is morally wrong..

(That's a summary-version of the kind of spiel I've heard in person from Koreans on many occasions; this rendering is more politely worded than the way it's actually delivered in many cases.)

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Talented translator Anton Hur was a 2025 International Booker Prize judge. In May 2025, he revealed one way this pressure operates. It can operate through an indirect, group-pressure-based mechanism of a kind that is certainly, in my experience and judgement, a lot more common in Asia than in the West; to the point that most Westerners won't really readily believe that it much exists at all. It's worth putting this into words explicitly, even if this is just a somewhat-trivial anecdote form.

(The following is effectively an addendum to my "Report on the Book Launch with Bora Chung and Anton Hur" [May 2025], at: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...).

Fellow Koreans, Anton Hur said (paraphrased; May 3, 2025, book-launch event in Hongdae, Seoul), have been giving me a hard time for months over the announced 2025 International Booker longlist. He had a hand in selecting this list, and in winnowing it down to the shortlist and then the winner (announced in May 2025). Why were they giving him a hard time? Because the longlist had included zero Korean books!

Anton Hur scoffed as he retold the anecdote. Anton Hur is a performer by instinct, and he does well with receptive groups. He went into a bit of a theatrical performance as he related the story. Why is he, as a Korean, morally bound to always promote Korean things? As I show with the full 2016-2025 data, it's hardly as if this the prize has lacked Koreans in the past decade!

Anton Hur added that he'd said to one of the recent Koreans pestering him: "Listen, [impolite appellation for a woman removed], No one's one more to promote Korean literature than me!" -- as if in moral self-defense.
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