Han Kang; translated by Deborah Smith
Human Acts by Han Kang, translated from the Korean by Deborah Smith, focuses on the 1980 Gwangju uprising in South Korea. Deborah Smith provides historical context of the uprising in the introduction. The two decades of the military dictatorship of Park Chung Hee were followed by another military dictatorship, that of the army general, Chun Doo-hwan. The people of Gwangju, led by student demonstrators, revolted against the military dictatorship, demanding democratic freedoms and better working conditions. Lasting for ten days, the Gwangju uprising was met with brutality, torture, and the massacre of hundreds of unarmed civilians. It is against this backdrop that Han Kang situates her novel.
The novel is divided into seven sections. Six of the sections are from individuals who experienced the uprising and its aftermath, including torture and rape. The six are all connected either through employment or friendship or as family. The seventh section, the Epilogue, veers away from fiction to fact by chronicling what prompted the author to research the Gwangju massacre, its impact on her life, and her decision to write a novel about it.
The novel opens with fifteen-year-old Dong-ho joining a group of civilians in the Provincial Office recently transformed into an improvised mortuary to deal with the influx of bodies. Dong-ho has been tasked with recording what information he can about the mountain of bodies piling up in hallways and rooms. His colleagues wash the bodies and cover them with sheets to afford them some dignity until family members can identify them and pick them up for burial. The next section is the ghost of Dong-ho’s friend. Killed by the army, he describes his body unceremoniously carted off in a truck and dumped with a pile of other rotting bodies before all are set ablaze. This is followed by sections from an editor, a prisoner, a factory girl, Dong-ho’s mother on the 30th anniversary of his death, and the Epilogue.
Each section describes in graphic detail the torture, the rape, the mutilation, the bludgeoning and shooting of innocent civilians. That human beings are capable of such inhumane acts is difficult to fathom. Through her characters, Han Kang shows survivors of the uprising as haunted for the rest of their lives by what they witnessed, what they personally experienced, and the loved ones they lost. Their psychological trauma remains unabated.
This is not an easy book to read. The descriptions are graphic; the horror is relentless; the violence is raw, brutal, and unflinching. The novel poses questions about the nature of humanity. What impact does a crowd have on individual behavior? Does crowd behavior compel us to perpetrate acts of unspeakable violence or acts of exceptional bravery or both? Are human beings naturally prone to inflicting such brutality and pain on one another? How does one confront such brutality? And how does one recover from it—assuming recovery is even possible?
Skillfully executed, gut-wrenching, immersive, and compelling, this is an important read. It is highly recommended but not for those who find it too distressing to read graphic descriptions of man’s inhumanity to man.