Human Acts

This book is largely unforgiving, starting immediately with the brutality that the people of Gwangju endured throughout the uprising. So much of this book is incredibly visceral.

Probably the strength of this book is that it is structured as a set of short stories, providing multiple perspectives. The first story starts with the protagonist of Dong-ho and his perspective of what was happening, while the rest of the stories all engage with the perspectives of others while continuing to follow him (to varying degrees).

There is one moment that frustrates me and that I feel undercuts the book, which is to simply say that there were military personnel that were "also nonaggressive" even as many were cruel. But it leaves me with an unanswered and unaddressed question: If they saw that what they were doing was wrong, why were they there? What were they doing to fight back and stop it, rather than to cushion it? It's one thing for civilians to do what they can to survive, but it's an entire other for military personnel to... do little acts of kindness (that can also easily be reinterpreted through other lenses that focus on protecting themselves and their institution).

I genuinely feel that this one bit really undercuts a lot of what came before it, especially because there is a persistent back-and-forth kind of dialogue going on that discusses degrees of nationalism. This was something that I didn't mind being left unanswered and incomplete, as it allows the reader to figure out their own position... but the inclusion of this small bit about the military makes it feel like a minor capitulation to acceptable social positions.

Han Kang's Human Acts is a story of grief from genocide that spans over thirty years. Ostensibly, it is a series of short stories that centre on the Guangju Uprising in South Korea in 1980, and its aftermath. But within this frame, Kang focuses the lens on one protagonist, Dong Ho, who is loosely or closely connected with the characters in the other chapters. She uses Dong Ho to connect the namelessness of a massacre with a very real (albeit fictional) child.

The storytelling as presented in the translation is excellent, visceral, beautiful and heartbreaking. Each character is fleshed out by Kang's brilliant ability to make words into humans. And in the end, this makes the book not only a lament but a powerful force. The repeat references to bodies (sweat, pain, "sacks of meat") are deeply evocative, and the thinly veiled references to US involvement in the mistreatment of Korean textile workers while propping up a dictatorship are brave even today. The final result is a masterpiece of literature that somehow manifests the grief of many people simultaneously.

Very rarely a book pervades my dreams. Human Acts is such a book. I was deeply affected by it, not because it is unfathomable to me that humans are capable of acts of inhumanity on an unimaginable scale, history is full of horrible acts of human violence, but because it is such a powerful book. It is done perfectly. It is deeply moving and disturbing. It is beautiful, on the outside as well as the inside.

I am not sure I have the right words to describe Human Acts. To me, it is a book that feels, it is alive. It feels pain, not just physical pain, but also emotional. It is a trauma that takes many forms, you can’t run away of it, you are the victim but you are also the source of all that pain.

Human Acts explores the traumatic legacy of the Gwangju massacre, in South Korea in 1980. In 1979, the then military dictator Park Chung-Hee, father of the ex-president Park Geun-Hye who was impeached by the National Assembly in 2016 and she is now an inmate at Seoul Detention Center, was assassinated by his protégé General Chun Doo-Hwan. Using the excuse of rumoured North Korea infiltration, Chun Doo-Hwan extended martial law across the country, closing universities, restricting freedom of press and banning political activities. In the southern city of Gwangju there was a student uprising that lasted a few days before crushed by the army. Thousands of people have been killed, injured, arrested and tortured.

Han Kang focuses on the feeling of being. What it means to be human. What humans do in the face of such violence. And if violence is part of being human, how can we accept that we are or can be one of those human beings that inflict such a terrible pain to others. There are a lot of questions but don’t expect to find answers.

The stories in the book are intertwined but on different timescales, from the time of the massacre to the present day. As in The vegetarian, violence is at the centre of things, but in Human Acts Han Kang further explores human strength and dignity, as well as the impact on the lives of those being exposed to violence.

Human Acts has been translated wonderfully by Deborah Smith.