Han Kang, the 53-year-old fiction writer, is a former winner of the Man Booker International Prize for her 2007 novel The Vegetarian.
At the Nobel Literature Prize ceremony she was praised “for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life”.
The Nobel Prize committee has awarded the literary award since 1901 and this marks the 18th time a woman has won the prize.