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.