Sirri Goksel Turkozu, who translated the Nobel Prize-winning book ”The Vegetarian” by Han Kang from Korean into Turkish, earned a scholarship from the Korean government and received a master’s in Korean-language education at Seoul National University in 1996, followed by a Ph.D. in 2004. 

Now chair of the Department of Eastern Languages and Literature at Erciyes University in Kayseri, Turkiye (Turkey), he champions Korean literature through his translations. He won the 2012 Korean Order of Cultural Merit and 2017 Korean Literature Translation Award from the Literature Translation Institute of Korea, the latter for his translation of Ahn Do-hyun’s ”The Salmon Who Dared to Leap Higher.”

The following are excerpts from an email interview with the scholar from Dec. 30, 2024, to Jan. 30.

How did you grow interested in Korean? 

My interest began with the 1988 Seoul Summer Olympics. Growing up, I’d often heard about the Korean War, so I assumed Korea was a poor country. When I watched the Olympics on television, I was amazed to see how modern and developed the country had become. The combination of the Korean War stories I’d heard while growing up and the impression the Seoul Olympics left on me ultimately inspired me to study Korean. 

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Source: Korea.net