Human Acts by Han Kang | Book Review

소년이 온다

In light of this year’s Nobel Prize Winner, Han Kang, I would like to review one of her books. Human Acts is, in fact, the only novel I have read from her; I had planned to read her other work, too, but so far, I haven’t. However, I can finally say that I’m familiar with the work of a Nobel Prize winner; I had to discover the winners from previous years after the prestigious prize.

When I picked up Human Acts a couple of years ago, Han Kang was famous for her first translated novel into English, The Vegetarian; a bestseller. I did not look her up immediately, but waited until the hype was a bit over and a second novel was translated. The plot of Human Acts spoke more to me; a story about a horrific political event in South Korean history. The Gwangju Student Uprising of 1980.

The title says enough. The novel is about humans and human acts towards each other. Han Kang was born in Gwangju herself, years after the event. But she did not casually mentioned the uprising in her novel, as a passed-by event or part of a character’s life, the uprising is the novel. Told from different perspectives, told to YOU directly. It was strange to read a novel from the second-person perspective, it was the first and only time I have seen that in a novel, but it was effective. You, as a reader, were part of the story.

Besides the original narrative, the writing style of Kang is atypical too. I have not read a book in the realm of literary fiction with so much explicit violence, and so many horrible details. But it cannot be compared to the extreme horror genre or books using violence for shock value. It was not about shocking the reader; it was about giving a detailed description of the human acts committed during the uprising. The things that people can do to each other and still sleep soundly at night; that’s the real horror of our world.

Han Kang makes no excuses, she tells what others kept silent. I’m glad that I have read this book first because it clearly showed the amount of research that she has done to give an honest view on the matter.

The people in power can have their agendas, often ones that do not serve the well-being of the general population, they are notorious for this. However, the problem lies in the masses. The normal people that carry that agenda, accept it. The ones that execute the given order.

At one point in the novel, a person asks why people still play the national anthem at the funeral of the victims, when it is the country, the people of this nation, that killed them. Soldiers, nonetheless, who were supposed to protect their own people.

‘’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.’’ – Han Kang, Human Acts

The Gwangju Uprising of the 18th of May 1980, is an interesting incident to read about. Most people have not heard of it even though so many innocent citizens have died at the hands of their own government. Students and children, the fundament of a nation’s future, killed off for speaking out in a ‘’democratic’’ country. Even worse, the harsh actions against the protesters were approved by the US at that time, another ‘’democratic’’ country.

But when you think about it; not surprising at all. Most horrific national events are kept silent or tried to be forgotten. Forget and forgive; that’s the goal of the guilty ones. International incidents are harder to lock up behind the door of time, but what happens inside a country is often only known to the people who live there. Literary fiction, like this novel, keeps the memory alive; and tells the stories that could not be told then.

In a book on moral repair*, Margaret Urban Walker explores the limits of forgiveness. What is necessary to forgive, restore the moral to the situation before the moral injury and move on? A major factor in repair is storytelling. Listening and understanding the narrative of the injured. Then, punish or reprimand the culprit, and let him make an apology. But even with this hard work, which is seldom achieved in cases when moral injury is done by people in power, it is not always possible to restore the moral. Some things cannot be forgiven.

‘’Conscience, the most terrifying thing in the world’’ – Han Kang, Human Acts

I hope more books will be written on important events from our past, not in dry history form but in the form of fiction that is able to let the reader feel the horror of the event. Hopefully, more people will read these books and reflect on the past, learn from human mistakes, and think about their own conscience. But in the meantime, we should celebrate Han Kang’s achievements as a writer and as the first South Korean Nobel Prize winner.

*Taegukgi: supreme ultimate flag

*Moral Repair: Reconstructing Moral Relations after Wrongdoing by Margaret Urban Walker

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