Kang Han

Follows the aftermath of a young boy's shocking death during a violent student uprising as told from the perspectives of the event's victims and their loved ones.

A Novel

Human Acts

Han Kang

Gwangju, South Korea, 1980. In the wake of a viciously suppressed student uprising, a boy searches for his friend's corpse, a consciousness searches for its abandoned body, and a brutalised country searches for a voice. In a sequence of interconnected chapters the victims and the bereaved encounter censorship, denial, forgiveness and the echoing agony of the original trauma. Human Acts is a universal book, utterly modern and profoundly timeless. Already a controversial bestseller and award-winning book in Korea, it confirms Han Kang as a writer of immense importance.

Fasiha🌺🐧

Let's walk over there, Mum, where it's sunny, we might as well, right? Pretending that you were too strong for me, I let you pull me along. It's sunny over there, Mum, and there's lots of flowers, too. Why are we walking in the dark, let's go over there, where the flowers are blooming.

If I call your name next time, will you please just turn around? You don't need to say "Yes, Mum?" or anything like that. Just turn round so I can see you.

Is it true that human beings are fundamentally cruel? Is the experience of cruelty the only thing we share as a species? Is the dignity that we cling to nothing but self-delusion, masking from ourselves this single truth: that each one of us is capable of being reduced to an insect, a ravening beast, a lump of meat? To be de-graded, damaged, slaughtered—-is this the essential fate of hu-mankind, one that history has confirmed as inevitable?

Claire Jorgensen

But I don't have a map for whatever world lies beyond death. I don't know whether there, too, there are meetings and partings, whether we still have faces and voices, hearts with the capacity for joy as well as sorrow.

In other words, "Gwangju" had become another name for whatever is forcibly isolated, beaten down, and brutalized, for all that has been mutilated beyond repair. The radioactive spread is ongoing. Gwangju had been reborn only to be butchered again in an endless cycle.

How often I overlooked on the days that passed by me, what moments am I made up of?

adah

Each moment is a leap forward from the brink of an invisible cliff, where time’s keen edges are constantly renewed.

How fitting and timeless this sentence is.

To be degraded, damaged, slaughtered—is this the essential fate of humankind, one that history has confirmed as inevitable?

soiled plants

 I waited for a while in doubt and ignorance, of who it was, of how to communicate with it. No one had ever taught me how to address a person's soul.

💌

Every time I recall the blood that flowed in the small hours of that night—literally flowed, gushing over the stairs in the pitch dark—it strikes me that those deaths did not belong solely to those who died. Rather, they were a substitute for the deaths of others. Many thousands of deaths, many thousands of hearts’ worth of blood.

After you died I couldn’t hold a funeral,

So these eyes that once beheld you became a shrine.

These ears that once heard your voice became a shrine.

These lungs that once inhaled your breath became a shrine.

After you died I could not hold a funeral,

As she silently chewed the grains of rice, it occurred to her, as it had before, that there was something shameful about eating. Gripped by this familiar shame, she thought of the dead, for whom the absence of life meant they would never be hungry again. But life still lingered on for her, with hunger still a yoke around her neck. 

We were bodies, dead bodies, and in that sense there was nothing to choose between us. All the same, there was something infinitely noble about how his body still bore the traces of hands that had touched it, a tangible record of having been cared for, been valued, that made me envious and sad. Mine, on the other hand, crushed out of shape beneath a tower of others, was shameful, detestable. 

In an attempt to batten down the rising tide of fear, I thought of my sister. Watching the blazing sun describing an arc farther and farther to the south, staring at my face as though trying to bore through those shuttered eyelids, I thought of my sister, only of her. And I felt an agony that almost broke me. She was dead, she had died even before I had. With neither tongue nor voice to carry it, my scream leaked out from me in a mess of blood and watery discharge. My soul-self had no eyes; where was the blood coming from, what nerve endings were sparking this pain? I stared at my unchanging face. My filthy hands were as still as ever. Over my fingernails, dyed a deep rust by watery blood, red ants were crawling, silent.

You fix on her eyes, which have become hollow and shadowed, and think, whereabouts in the body is that bird when the person is still alive? In that furrowed brow, above the halo-like crown of that head, in some chamber of the heart?

Grace McCarter

. . . how I longed to extend my trembling fingers to the outer edge of her heart.

The trees in front of the Provincial Office are being lashed by the rain. Squatting down on the highest step, the one closest to the door, you think back to your biology lessons. Studying the respiration of plants during fifth period, when the sunlight was always on the wane, seems like something that took place in another world, now. Trees, you were told, survive on a single breath per day. When the sun rises, they drink in a long, luxurious draught of its rays, and when it sets they exhale a great stream of carbon dioxide. Those trees over there, who hold those long breaths within themselves with such unwavering patience, are bending under the onslaught of the rain.

mori

Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.

I forgive no one, and no one forgives me.

I want to see their faces, to hover above their sleeping eyelids like a guttering flame, to slip inside their dreams, spend the nights flaring in through their forehead, their eyelids. Until their nightmares are filled with my eyes, my eyes as the blood drains out. Until they hear my voice asking, demanding, why.

kemi

I’m waiting. No one is going to come, but still I wait. No one even knows I’m here, but I’m waiting all the same.

we’d all performed the miracle of stepping outside the shell of our own selves, one person’s tender skin coming into grazed contact with another,

Quiero que todos lean este libro y al mismo tiempo quiero que nadie sufra como yo al leerlo.

Jazmín Mejía

This was devastating. Jesus Christ. I wish I could articulate it better, but all I can say is: you should read it.

Milo

In writing any book of historical fiction about real atrocities with real victims, one has to balance the author’s aesthetic goals and aims versus treating its subject matter with enough dignity as to not gloss over real tragedy. I said a very similar thing in my last review of Blowfish by Kyung-Ran Jo, another Korean novel, which dealt with the very serious topic of suicide. This balance is even more delicate when the topic in question does not concern a generalised people, but a distinct group, some of which are still living with the aftermath of such tragedy. When it comes to reading and evaluating such books, the same kind of balance exists, though to a lesser extent. A review can only focus on aesthetics rather than information to point, and it’s crucial to understand that, beyond the words on the page, an author often has something important to say about the world. 

Human Acts is about the Gwangju Uprising in South Korea in 1980, where pro-democracy protesters and civilians were violently and mercilessly massacred under the authoritarian rule of Chun Doo-hwan. The novel is structured in several parts, each representing the story of a different person in different time periods following the uprising, reflecting the lingering and latent effects of trauma, even decades after the principal event. Each of these characters are interlinked around the ‘central’ character Dong-ho, introduced in the first chapter as a teenage student looking for the body of his friend who was killed by the state in a makeshift mortuary in a gym where protesters’ bodies are identified by their families. Dong-ho, unable to find his friend, decides to stay back and help care for the bodies. It is from there he meets most of the characters to which parts are dedicated to in the novel, showing the immediate impact of one life on many—the chapter narrated with the second person pronoun ‘you’, it is a life that could be any one of us, caught in the crossfire of history.

Each part has a slightly distinct structure, not only switching the principal character, but also switching narrative voice and perspective, with each having somewhat experimental chapter designs. It makes Human Acts feel like a set of linked short stories, with characters from one story appearing in the other, sometimes in minor and concealed ways. What doesn’t change throughout is Han Kang’s voice, which is refined, sleek, brutal and symbolic. It is the kind of voice needed for tackling such a serious topic, with scenes of torture and indiscriminate violence described unflinchingly, with little embellishment or metaphor. Han Kang wants you to feel the brutality, viscerally, and to remind the reader of the real physical and mental anguish these real people went through. It is a simple and effective prose style, and while it is easy to read, it is, at points, not easy-reading. 

Though while Han has a heavy focus on the body, she is also occupied with discussing the soul and the spirit, and one of the themes throughout the novel is this body/soul dualism, and the way atrocity both brings the dualism into question (what is a soul when its tethered body is made to suffer?) and celebrates it (through the remembrance of those fallen, and through the spiritual linkage of the collective Gwangju people). This isn’t just symbolic—in the second part of the novel we are given the perspective of a literal spirit as a narrator, reflecting on its lost body and its listlessness on earth. Thereafter this theme creeps into the narrative with this continuous funereal perspective of remembrance. Characters are constantly visiting one another spiritually, and this is presenting often as a form of involuntary memory. It is memory and the soul that are beautifully entwined in this novel—both spirits and trauma uprising like ghosts, a cosmic and existential dance. 

The biggest overarching theme of the novel, however, is the bravery and importance of telling one’s story. Of remembering, recording and retelling. It is practically the thesis of the novel itself, it being on its own a retelling of a shameful moment of Korean history that is still downplayed today, and one of which information relating to deaths is shrouded in mystery. It is also about the ‘human acts of kindness’ that permeate through atrocities, whether it is the large things like caring for the dead and injured, or the smaller things, like hearing one’s lived experience. It is not a draining book, but a life-affirming one. It is a book that doesn’t teach one to stand up against injustice, but reminds us that the innate sense to do so is within us already.

Although translated Korean, I’ve found, can lose a lot of its meaning, I would definitely love to read more Han Kang in the future, and I’m interested to see how she tackles topics outside of historical fiction. I would definitely recommend this book.

shain

In writing any book of historical fiction about real atrocities with real victims, one has to balance the author’s aesthetic goals and aims versus treating its subject matter with enough dignity as to not gloss over real tragedy. I said a very similar thing in my last review of Blowfish by Kyung-Ran Jo, another Korean novel, which dealt with the very serious topic of suicide. This balance is even more delicate when the topic in question does not concern a generalised people, but a distinct group, some of which are still living with the aftermath of such tragedy. When it comes to reading and evaluating such books, the same kind of balance exists, though to a lesser extent. A review can only focus on aesthetics rather than information to point, and it’s crucial to understand that, beyond the words on the page, an author often has something important to say about the world. 

Human Acts is about the Gwangju Uprising in South Korea in 1980, where pro-democracy protesters and civilians were violently and mercilessly massacred under the authoritarian rule of Chun Doo-hwan. The novel is structured in several parts, each representing the story of a different person in different time periods following the uprising, reflecting the lingering and latent effects of trauma, even decades after the principal event. Each of these characters are interlinked around the ‘central’ character Dong-ho, introduced in the first chapter as a teenage student looking for the body of his friend who was killed by the state in a makeshift mortuary in a gym where protesters’ bodies are identified by their families. Dong-ho, unable to find his friend, decides to stay back and help care for the bodies. It is from there he meets most of the characters to which parts are dedicated to in the novel, showing the immediate impact of one life on many—the chapter narrated with the second person pronoun ‘you’, it is a life that could be any one of us, caught in the crossfire of history.

Each part has a slightly distinct structure, not only switching the principal character, but also switching narrative voice and perspective, with each having somewhat experimental chapter designs. It makes Human Acts feel like a set of linked short stories, with characters from one story appearing in the other, sometimes in minor and concealed ways. What doesn’t change throughout is Han Kang’s voice, which is refined, sleek, brutal and symbolic. It is the kind of voice needed for tackling such a serious topic, with scenes of torture and indiscriminate violence described unflinchingly, with little embellishment or metaphor. Han Kang wants you to feel the brutality, viscerally, and to remind the reader of the real physical and mental anguish these real people went through. It is a simple and effective prose style, and while it is easy to read, it is, at points, not easy-reading. 

Though while Han has a heavy focus on the body, she is also occupied with discussing the soul and the spirit, and one of the themes throughout the novel is this body/soul dualism, and the way atrocity both brings the dualism into question (what is a soul when its tethered body is made to suffer?) and celebrates it (through the remembrance of those fallen, and through the spiritual linkage of the collective Gwangju people). This isn’t just symbolic—in the second part of the novel we are given the perspective of a literal spirit as a narrator, reflecting on its lost body and its listlessness on earth. Thereafter this theme creeps into the narrative with this continuous funereal perspective of remembrance. Characters are constantly visiting one another spiritually, and this is presenting often as a form of involuntary memory. It is memory and the soul that are beautifully entwined in this novel—both spirits and trauma uprising like ghosts, a cosmic and existential dance. 

The biggest overarching theme of the novel, however, is the bravery and importance of telling one’s story. Of remembering, recording and retelling. It is practically the thesis of the novel itself, it being on its own a retelling of a shameful moment of Korean history that is still downplayed today, and one of which information relating to deaths is shrouded in mystery. It is also about the ‘human acts of kindness’ that permeate through atrocities, whether it is the large things like caring for the dead and injured, or the smaller things, like hearing one’s lived experience. It is not a draining book, but a life-affirming one. It is a book that doesn’t teach one to stand up against injustice, but reminds us that the innate sense to do so is within us already.

Although translated Korean, I’ve found, can lose a lot of its meaning, I would definitely love to read more Han Kang in the future, and I’m interested to see how she tackles topics outside of historical fiction. I would definitely recommend this book.

nina 

Mario Menti 

i cannot believe i struggled not to cry in the train while reading this book

What is the nature of humanity? How can we simultaneously be capable of so much love and so much cruelty? How does one inflict pain and death over others so simply? Human Acts is a must read for people looking for a wake up, for all of us living in our small bubbles with our everyday problems. A heartbreaking retelling of the Gwangju Uprising from the perspectives of different characters carrying different stories that connect to each other so deeply. An unforgettable read.

deniz

this was so gut-wrenchingly devastating that it took me months to finish despite it being such a short book. (p.s. do NOT read this if you are grieving anyone in ur life) 

malaa

Tragic, upsetting, beautiful, and inspiring. I cried literal tears reading this. 

Brandon

"After you died I could not hold a funeral, 

by Han Kang is based on real life historical events during the suppressed students uprisings and Gwangju massacre in South Korea in 1980 with seven different perspectives, each incredibly painful and gutwrenching in their own way.

In the beginning, the novel was fragmentary and distant and I had a hard time keeping up with it until it became a chronicle of human emotions, of how humans act. Everything about this book is so poetic and real, a just review would not be possible, at least not by me.

"Why would you sing the national anthem for people who’d been killed by soldiers? Why cover the coffin with the Taegukgi? As though it wasn’t the nation itself that had murdered them."

This book is going to haunt me till the end times.

The only problem with this book (maybe it's a problem with 

instead and not the book) but the writing felt distant and impersonal. And it is possible that it might be because I've been reading the translated english version and not the original text, but this thing was a little bit off putting for me. Overall, it was a worthy read and I want to delve deeper into Kang's other works. 

sani

"After you died I could not hold a funeral, 
And so my life became a funeral."

Human Acts by Han Kang is based on real life historical events during the suppressed students uprisings and Gwangju massacre in South Korea in 1980 with seven different perspectives, each incredibly painful and gutwrenching in their own way.

In the beginning, the novel was fragmentary and distant and I had a hard time keeping up with it until it became a chronicle of human emotions, of how humans act. Everything about this book is so poetic and real, a just review would not be possible, at least not by me.

"Why would you sing the national anthem for people who’d been killed by soldiers? Why cover the coffin with the Taegukgi? As though it wasn’t the nation itself that had murdered them."

This book is going to haunt me till the end times.

The only problem with this book (maybe it's a problem with me instead and not the book) but the writing felt distant and impersonal. And it is possible that it might be because I've been reading the translated english version and not the original text, but this thing was a little bit off putting for me. Overall, it was a worthy read and I want to delve deeper into Kang's other works. 

"Now do you understand? The kids in this photo aren't lying side by side because their corpses were lined up like that after they were killed. It's because they were walking in a line. 

They were walking in a straight line, with both arms in the air, just like we'd told them to."

so much can be said, but should be left to the reader to experience. sometimes words tend to spill out in utter silence.

diya

"Now do you understand? The kids in this photo aren't lying side by side because their corpses were lined up like that after they were killed. It's because they were walking in a line. 

They were walking in a straight line, with both arms in the air, just like we'd told them to."

so much can be said, but should be left to the reader to experience. sometimes words tend to spill out in utter silence.



"After you died I couldn't hold a funeral, so my life became a funeral. After you were wrapped in a tarpaulin and carted away in a garbage truck. After sparkling jets of water sprayed unforgivably from the fountain. Everywhere the lights of the temple shrines are burning. In the flowers that bloom in spring, in the snowflakes. In the evenings that draw each day to a close. Sparks from the candles, burning in empty drink bottles."

If I had loved this book less, I might be able to talk about it more. Human Acts tells the story of South Korea's Gwangju Student Uprising of 1980 that led to the deaths of over two thousand people. Written in succint, seemingly innocent proses, Han Kang writes so simply yet so beautifully, we get swept away in a torrent of emotions. 

Each chapter follows a different character and their lives before, during and after the uprising. We get full view of their experiences: their pain, the torture and suffering they went through, the sleepless night that follows, the grief they breathe with every breath, their guilt, their lives—forever changed by the events that transpired. 

This book left me feeling so empty and hollow. I simply could not fathom the acts done by these so called 'humans'. To call them violence is not enough, the mere attempt to express them with words is a travesty.

Trisa P

"After you died I couldn't hold a funeral, so my life became a funeral. After you were wrapped in a tarpaulin and carted away in a garbage truck. After sparkling jets of water sprayed unforgivably from the fountain. Everywhere the lights of the temple shrines are burning. In the flowers that bloom in spring, in the snowflakes. In the evenings that draw each day to a close. Sparks from the candles, burning in empty drink bottles." 

If I had loved this book less, I might be able to talk about it more. Human Acts tells the story of South Korea's Gwangju Student Uprising of 1980 that led to the deaths of over two thousand people. Written in succint, seemingly innocent proses, Han Kang writes so simply yet so beautifully, we get swept away in a torrent of emotions. 

Each chapter follows a different character and their lives before, during and after the uprising. We get full view of their experiences: their pain, the torture and suffering they went through, the sleepless night that follows, the grief they breathe with every breath, their guilt, their lives—forever changed by the events that transpired. 


This book left me feeling so empty and hollow. I simply could not fathom the acts done by these so called 'humans'. To call them violence is not enough, the mere attempt to express them with words is a travesty.

one of the best i've ever read, i think everyone should read it

Gwangju, South Korea, 1980. In the wake of a viciously suppressed student uprising, a boy searches for his friend's corpse, a consciousness searches for its abandoned body, and a brutalised country searches for a voice. In a sequence of interconnected chapters the victims and the bereaved encounter censorship, denial, forgiveness and the echoing agony of the original trauma.

this was a profound and absolutely engulfing read, my compliments to han kang for her work (as well as to the translator for hers). han kang has done a fantastic job of depicting the events from 1980 and their echo through the following decades by creating a detailed and complex psychological portrait of the gwangju uprising.

in order to truly impress that impact of the uprising on the reader, han kang has chosen to depict multiple points of view of multiple different characters (each with varying connections to the event itself). such a feat could have been disastrous in the hands of a less capable author - however, here, it is impactful and effective in relaying both the events and the scars they have left in the social psyche.

a particularly admirable quality of the book is that it never aims to depict the uprising or the participants as infallible heroes, as that would be to simplify the complex history of gwangju and south korea and further distance the reader from it. instead it substitutes the pathos usually characteristic for such works with honesty and truthfulness. it does not seek to tug on any heart strings or revel in the gruesomeness of the violent suppression of the uprising (like some other authors are tempted to do) - it is simply stating the facts of history, and that history is horrifying. but this approach is infinitely more important and respectful of all those who have been scarred by this tragedy.

brie 🦪

Naomi P

Images of martial law are the same for every country that has experienced it. It was painful to read the acts of violence done to the citizens as they try to stay alive while still fighting for freedom.

Lauren B

As much as I found "The Vegetarian" weird and unsettling, "Human Acts" was heart-breaking and impactful. The story is brutal but so was the military repression of the uprising that took place in Gwangju in 1980. Han Kang's sharp writing depicts that tense and tragic atmosphere brilliantly. She fearlessly describes the long-lasting impact those events had on people's life as if she was trying to exorcise those terrible images from her own memory as well. This is a book you will not forget.

Ghita B

It was rich in emotions and often hard to read. I had to take a few breaks during my read. If the translated work hits this hard, I can only imagine the weight of the emotions conveyed by the author in its original language.

Alexia Cambaling

Content warning/s: Police brutality; state-sponsored violence

Contains spoilers.

This is one of the most gut-wrenching, yet beautiful books I’ve ever read. It is at once, both familiar and yet so different and in every page, you could feel the weight of history, that sense of loss that permeates every page. What a stunning, yet horrifying book. Human Acts by Han Kang is never an easy read, but a worthwhile one from beginning to end. It is like a series of inter-connected stories taking place in different years revolving around a historical event known as the Gwangju Uprising.

The book begins with bodies. A young boy helps prepare bodies of victims for burial, alternately hoping that his friend and his sister are alive or that they’d find the bodies. This story is told in the second-person which is used to stunning effect. The writing is beautiful, but painful. 

He also asks himself, why sing the national anthem for those killed by soldiers, why drape the coffins of victims of state-sponsored violence with flags? In the time period when this book was written, my country also experienced Martial Law under a dictator. Like in the events depicted in this book, there was also state-sponsored violence, and the disappearance of many activists. I thought to myself that there is a familiarity in this book, this is what the weight of history feels like. To answer the boy’s question, he was told by the people he was helping with that what the soldiers did was unlawful, that they weren’t the nation. The people they were preparing for burial weren’t murdered by the nation.

This was admittedly a difficult point for me to grasp because at the time I was reading it, I thought that maybe they were trying to convince themselves that their country, the country that they believed in, wouldn’t do this. Maybe I’m just projecting my own biases here, but I do understand that feeling. We want to believe in our country, that our nation is good and will do good by the people living in it. Those who face a different reality, those who see the other side, the brutality, their stories are depicted here.

From the ending of the first story, the book never lets up. The second point of view we encounter is Jeong-dae, the friend Dong-Ho was looking for. He was already dead and his story is told in the first person, sometimes addressing Dong-ho in the second person. He was dead and his soul lingers, unable to move on while his body lies wherever the soldiers had taken it. He was looking for his sister, already knowing her fate.

The rest of the stories are told in different points of views, from an editor who had worked with Dong-ho to prepare and identify the bodies, to a prisoner who was there that day and survived, to an ex-factory worker girl who suffered torture as an activist. The last story and one of the saddest, was Dong-ho’s mother. Various literary devices were employed so that each chapter has a different style, lending to a distinctness in each voice. In the background of these stories, Dong-ho serves as a lingering presence.

There is a sense of reckoning in this book, a sense of the pain of memory, of remembering. Many of the characters show signs of PTSD and survivor’s guilt. All of them are dealing with the trauma associated with the uprising, an event which had happened because of a genuine desire for democracy, to have a say in their country’s future, and by extension, their future. Instead, these characters saw their once-bright and promising futures curtailed, wracked by the pain of what happened years prior, never fully getting over it, and having to deal with the trauma each in their own way. It deals a lot with interiority, exploring the characters’ psyche in an unrelenting manner, and shows in stark detail the ways they have been affected by the Gwangju Uprising.

This is a very difficult book to read in terms of subject matter and for some, it can be triggering. It is painful, sad, and doesn’t offer much in the way of clear answers, but it is an excellent book. I would highly recommend it and I give it five stars, but I won’t recommend it lightly. It’s not for everybody and the graphic depictions of state-sponsored violence can be triggering for some people.

Human Acts A Novel

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