Han Kang, South Korea's first winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, was slow to global acclaim, getting her first big international prize nine years after her best-known novel was published, and finally translated into English.
The long wait for the translation of "The Vegetarian", which won the 2016 Man Booker International prize, seemed to prove the observation of Han's father - that it was the kind of book "that goes straight into the drawer".
"The Vegetarian" had sold fewer than a million copies back home before Thursday's Nobel announcement by the Swedish Academy, largely because of relatively low literature readership among South Koreans and a languishing publishing industry.
Thursday's surprise announcement - Han had not been on any of the major lists of likely Nobel winners - fuelled hope that the land of K-pop and "Squid Game" might get an injection of life into its literature.
"I grew up with Korean literature, which I feel very close to," Han told an Academy official in her only comments since the award was announced. "I hope this news is nice for Korean literature readers and my friends, writers."
Literary critic Oh Hyung-yup, a Korea University professor, said Han's Nobel recognition was a win for the long-term effort to translate Korean literature for the global audience, who are already familiar with South Korea's pop culture.