At the 124th Nobel Awards event on Wednesday in Stockholm, Sweden, renowned novelist Han Kang was presented with the coveted Nobel Prize in Literature. At the Stockholm Concert Hall, Han, wearing a striking black outfit, got the prize from King Carl XVI Gustaf.

Mozart’s March in D Major played when the Swedish king arrived and the laureates took their seats on stage to kick off the ceremony. The prize will include 11 million Swedish kronor (about $1.07 million) and a Nobel medal for Han.

Ellen Mattson, a Swedish writer and member of the Nobel Committee for Literature, delivered the literature award speech, praising Han’s work for its powerful use of symbolism. “Two colors meet in Han Kang’s writing: white and red,” Mattson said. “The white is the snow that falls in so many of her books, drawing a protective curtain between the narrator and the world, but white is also the color of sorrow and of death. Red stands for life, but also for pain, blood, the deep cuts of a knife.”

Highlighting Han’s critically acclaimed 2021 book We Do Not Part, Mattson described it as a journey through historical layers and memory during a snowstorm, in which the narrative self engages with the shadows of the deceased to uncover harsh realities.

Due to pronunciation issues, Mattson decided to use English instead of Korean when he first intended to introduce Han. The Nobel Foundation Chair Professor Astrid Söderbergh Widding praised Han’s in-depth examination of historical tragedy and human fragility.

The eighty-minute ceremony also honored laureates from a variety of fields, such as physics’ John J. Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton; chemistry’s David Baker, Demis Hassabis, and John Jumper; physiology or medicine’s Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun; and economics’ Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James A. Robinson. As is customary, Nihon Hidankyo received the Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway.

Celebrated for her “intense poetic prose confronting historical trauma,” Han Kang is the second Korean Nobel laureate and the first Asian woman to win the literary prize, following President Kim Dae-jung, who was awarded the Peace Prize in 2000.

The event concluded with the Swedish national anthem, with a lavish banquet at Stockholm’s City Hall marking the final celebration of the evening.