The Nobel Prize is the most prestigious, but it does not cover all fields. No Korean has won the Fields Medal, the most prestigious prize for mathematics, but three Japanese and two Chinese have won the prize since it began in 1936. In architecture, the most prestigious prize is the Pritzker Architecture Prize, and to date, six Japanese and one Chinese have won the award, but no Korean. No Korean film has been nominated for or won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film; Japanese films have won four awards. What is going on here? One obvious explanation is that major prizes are subjective and Korea has simply been unlikely. This is certainly true with controversial prizes such as the Nobel Prize for Literature and the Nobel Peace Prize, but the pattern is repeated in the sciences. Another explanation is that the prizes favor the West for linguistic and cultural reasons. This implies that the prize awarding committees, which are dominated by Europeans and North Americans, are biased in favor of what they know best. In discussing the Nobel Prize for Literature, supporters often argue that poor translations and the inherent “intranslatability” of Korean literature makes it impossible for it to receive the recognition it deserves.