Human Acts

“Some memories never heal. Rather than fading with the passage of time, those memories become the only things that are left behind when all else is abraded.”

Human Acts is the story of the Gwangju Uprising in South Korea in 1980, told from the perspectives of seven narrators - some named, some unnamed. The author examines the idea that time heals all wounds, and presents a different possiblity - that time, instead, turns memories into ghosts, which stay with us for a lifetime.

This was not an easy book to read, as it deals frankly and graphically with war, torture, and suicide. It is, however, a read that felt timely, especially with the current geopolitical climate.

''It's the middle of the day, but the dim interior is more like evening's dusky half-light. The coffins that have already been through the memorial service have been grouped neatly near the door, while at the foot of the large windows, each covered with a white cloth, lie the bodies of thirty-two people for whom no relatives have yet arrived to put them in their coffins. Next to each of their heads, a candle wedged into an empty drinks bottle flickers quietly.''

Gwangju, South Korea, 1980. The citizens react against the murder of university students by the military regime. The wave of resistance grows more powerful and soon the dictatorship is faced with a revolution. A fight for freedom and democracy for the people of South Korea. The death toll rises by the minute. The morgues and gyms are full of dead bodies, young and old, adults and children. They are carried away like rubbish, the prisons become Hell on Earth. Among the victims, a young man, a student with dreams and aspirations. He is our guide to a course of death, his voice full of melancholy and pain.

This is Han Kang's tribute to the events that shaped her homeland. This is one of the most powerful novels you'll ever have the blessing to read...

‘'Suddenly it occurs to you to wonder, when the body dies, what happens to the soul? How long does it linger by the side of its former home?''

There is no respect for the living and the dead. Corpses are purposefully abused to become impossible to be recognized. They are loaded into garbage trucks and taken to a mass grave. The regime has eliminated every trace of dignity and justice. Rapes, beatings, torture to the point where you consider those who have died to be incredibly fortunate. The survivors of the atrocities find themselves in limbo. How can you go on living? What has life become following blind hatred and massacre? What is left to keep you going?

''After you were lost to us, all our hours declined into evening. Evening are our streets and our houses. In this half-light that no longer darkens nor lightens, we eat, and walk, and sleep.''

Dong-ho is the focal point of the novel. By his side, his best friend who cannot escape the darkness, a woman who works as an editor and is threatened by the regime that venerates censorship, a prisoner who leads us into the hellish quarters, a former factory worker who struggles to recover from her traumas, and Dong-ho's mother who tries to grasp the terrifying reality that destroyed her world. These voices form a Chorus that narrates a dark tale of the cruelty that human beings are capable of. Unadulterated, shameless, merciless cruelty to impose their power and twisted ambitions.

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

Why Dong-ho? Because he is one of us, a young student who wanted to decide his own future in a free land. There are no leaders or warriors of fairytales in real life but fighters on a daily basis, simple citizens who demanded freedom. These are the true heroes. Dong-ho becomes a symbol, a beacon in a country covered by darkness. He is one of the thousands of victims of totalitarianism coming from all sides. Left, right, it doesn't matter. They are the two faces of the same tarnished coin. Danger and violence don't recognize ‘‘sides''. It is we who create poles and divide. And this is why History repeats itself. Because we separate violence to ‘‘left and right'', forgetting that there is no difference between two evils.

To speak in literary terms for this novel would be an affront to the impact of the subject matter and Han Kang needs no introductions. Within moments of serenity and beauty, there are scenes of unbearable cruelty and raw violence. And this is how it should be, in my opinion. Novels such as this need to be merciless. To turn our eyes away because of content that is ‘‘hard to read'' is to turn a blind eye to the wounds that have been plaguing mankind for far too long. Let us live in a bubble and in safety...Let us be ignorant...

There are a few passages that are impossible to be described accurately. The writing is transcendental and the second-person perspective is the proper vehicle to engage the readers and hold them tightly in a nightmarish dance to pure horror. That is if the readers are willing to dig deeper into their souls and come face-to-face with acts that can only be committed by the most violent animal in God's creation. The human. Han Kang's Epilogue is a masterpiece in itself.

I will use the clichée I hate and say that this novel should be required reading to every university in the world, in a futile hope to prevent the eternal circle of violence coming from all sides...

''Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.I forgive no one, and no one forgives me.''

My reviews can also be found on https://theopinionatedreaderblog.wordpress.com/

This is my first book of Han Kang. I understand why she was chosen as the Nobel Prize this year. But, have to say her writing style is not my favorite. It was difficult to follow through, and a bit too poetic for me.

as many of us, in 2020 I picked up a book again after a long time of not reading for pleasure. I had heard about human acts by Han Kang and decided to give it a try. I was completely surprised by this mostly simple but extremely real and moving story. I do not know if I have also attached the nostalgia of my story of becoming a reader to this book, but every time I think about it, I feel positively overwhelmed. overwhelmed and comforted to remember these characters and be placed back in this story.

definitely a must read. I was delighted to know that Han Kang received the Nobel Prize for Literature. It was most certainly deserved.

so fucking good

This book is the most beautiful form of violence you will ever endure. It's a beautifully devastating story about loss, identity, and the wounds history refuses to close. It unravels how trauma breaks and reshapes a person, how memory clings like a ghost, both unbearable and impossible to release, and how forgetting can feel like the deepest betrayal. This isn't just a book about a massacre, it's about the fragile, stubborn resilience of being human in the face of unbearable cruelty.

I mean it's a good book, very disturbing and sad. But I just couldn't get into it. I found myself scrolling on the internet instead of reading, and that's my sign that I need to move on to a different book.

quel chef d'oeuvre!! c'est incroyable d'arriver à transcrire une histoire aussi horrible avec autant de beauté

beautifully written & unflinchingly raw. one of my favorite reads ever; human acts is the paragon of non-linear narratives & changing perspectives. the differing narration styles (first/second/third person) & the change in structure really highlights the "mystery" element of this novel. "mystery" in the sense that the reader is trying to get the full picture of dong-ho's life&death, but also the different people of gwangju and the full, long-term effects state violence had on the country & city.

no character is wasted. the tight, small (named) cast makes each moment more heartwrenching; each character is given their ending and has their story told.

han kang's writing isn't for everyone, but i found her style remarkable! i really enjoy her esoteric vernacular. credit where credit is due, i think deborah smith's translation of human acts will be much more pleasing to critics of the vegetarian. one of my personal gripes with the eng version of the vegetarian (though i'd like to think i'm a bit more forgiving than the average article writer) was that its differing tone in english. i felt as if kang's writing (in korean) is extremely vivid & grounding, which makes her more fantastical writing topics (such as about the soul re: human acts & dreams re: the vegetarian) have much more of an impact. smith really nailed the grittiness of kang's style in human acts & i feel as if the kor & eng versions read more or less the same !

just a really spectacular book detailing an important part of rok's history written beautifully. i have read no one more deserving of the nobel prize.

jpg clout challenge 2/5

Raw. Powerful. Confronting.

Heartbreaking and beautifully narrated. I loved the varied perspectives, but would have loved a little more of a plot or a conclusion. The types of characters and their experiences really carried this book though, making it totally worth the read.

This was such a devastatingly beautiful read. It's impossible to read this book with dry eyes.
I tend to avoid books that contain such gruesomeness, especially those detailing on times of conflicts and wars. But the beauty of the book lies in its writing and I loved how deeply the book affected me.

I don't think I've been this devastated reading a book since I read Night by Ellie Wiesel in High School. However, by the same token that that book is required reading, so too should Human Acts also be a required read.
It is much easier to sit and read facts about history, but much more difficult when the same event is told through the eyes of people; individuals with emotion, dreams, beliefs, hopes, friends, and family. Han Kang takes this brutal, horrific event and humanizes it so you don't see numbers or news articles, but flesh and blood people. People who just as easily could be your family or friends. And this is where her novel Human Acts excels. I was an absolute puddle of tears multiple times, but most especially at the end.
It has eerily fresh parallels to the current political climate, whether about the danger of suppression of media no matter what the political view, government control of the narrative of events or using martial law to shut down peaceful protest because the government doesn't agree with the protester's stance. It reminds us to be vigilant so history isn't repeated. And it can only do that by telling the story through the eyes of those who died because of it, lived through it and were left with a loss so deep that 40 years on they continue feel that devastation keenly.
A very powerful book, that deserves to be held in a high regard and to read by many.

3.5 ⭐️

Got to 70% and gave up :( if you're reading this, don't be discourage at giving it a go. It was my first Korean book in translation and so I wasn't sure what to expect. The writing is poetic and beautiful at times but overall the subject matter was just a little too depressing for me personally and the unfamiliar narration style made it hard to get drawn into the narrative. However happy that I gave it a good shot

Heartbreaking, I read a lot about Gwangju uprising and it was truly horrific. This book was really moving and shocking..

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

Very difficult book to read about first hand accounts of the Gwangju Uprising, and fight for civil rights in South Korea. Five stars, very well written and translated about such difficult subject matter - a book I will continue to remember, and revealing about history I have known little.

Loosely connected fragments and lives centred around the 1980 Gwangju uprising when the South Korean government brutally killed and tortured many students. We inhabit different minds, in the past and the present, of the living, the survivors, and the dead. The novel questions the acts we as humans are able to commit against each other, and the scars and weight those who suffered have to carry with them forever. I love Han's [b:The Vegetarian 25489025 The Vegetarian Han Kang https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1478196580s/25489025.jpg 18449744] but I couldn't quite connect with this one. The writing is beautiful and haunting, yet it had too many POVs for my taste and the storytelling was too vague, too torn.

Until late December 1977, I was a Peace Corps Volunteer teaching English at Chonbuk University in Jeonju City, the capital of North Jeolla Province of South Korea. I was there for two years and it was a tense time politically, both internally and because of the ongoing conflict with North Korea. While Jeonju City was fairly calm–it's an agricultural province known for its great food–the neighboring province, South Jeolla, was a hotbed of anti-government activity. Tensions weren't unknown in Jeonju, though. I remember that one of my students stopped showing up to classes. When I asked where he was, the students wouldn't tell me, but I eventually learned that he'd been arrested for demonstrating against the government.

Just a year and a half after I left Korea, the ruthless President, Park Chung-hee, was assassinated. In 1979-80, demonstrations against the government and the newly installed President Chun grew, especially in Gwangju, the capital of South Jeolla. In May, the demonstrations were brutally quelled and an unknown number of people were killed by the military. (Officially, the number is under 200 dead; unofficially the number is between one and two thousand.)

The Gwangju Uprising is the subject of this book, which is told in stark and gruesome detail. It is shocking because while the dramatization is imagined by the author, the story is true. It's told from a variety of points of view, mostly focused on a middle-school boy, Dong-ho, who participates in the demonstrations and later is remembered by various survivors and witnesses.

It's not an easy book to read, but it's an important one. Never again. We hope.

Like many of the readers who have read or are currently reading this novel, I was intrigued by Han Kang's earlier novel, The Vegetarian. The Vegetarian elicited many different, strongly-held views from its readers. Many were haunted or captivated. Some were horrified. Others were simply confused. Although Human Acts is a very different story told in a wholly different manner, it is likely to garner may of the same feelings as its predecessor.

Human Acts is gorgeously written and achingly tender. Though one must recognize that translation plays a part in Kang's novels, the words here have a rhythm and beauty. There is strength in these sentences and they stand together to build a solid piece of literature. The story itself, centering on the 1980 failed student revolution in South Korea, is heartbreaking and its concise packaging aids in keeping the reader's interest. Minor details make the story very real. The characters carry traits that really bring them to life.

Yet, like The Vegetarian, there are omissions and vague descriptions in Human Acts that make the story dream-like. Most of the story is told in the second person. All these vague “you”s mold a more poetic text, but alienate the reader. New characters are introduced every chapter, but it takes pages (or an entire chapter) to determine who this new character is. Sometimes, at the end of a chapter, I continued to struggle with how the selection into the larger story. Much of this confusion is caused by the method of telling the story. The “you” was inconsistent; sometimes it was the subject of the chapter, other times it was another character the narrator of the chapter was talking to. And yet, the ethereal quality evoked by these vague components is part of the beauty and draw of Kang's works.

Though Human Acts is nearly as surreal in terms of language and delivery as The Vegetarian, its more concrete subject manner will likely make the novel more relatable for an American audience. It is not nearly as strange and memorable as The Vegetarian, but it is remarkable in its own ways.

The writing is beautiful and the translation assured. It follows several people in the aftermath of the Gwangju uprising and subsequent quelling by the army. The aftermath creeps across the years as dark tendrils that still lay hold of those involved.

Sounds like a compelling plot as Kang plays witness to the events of 1980. But these are all bookish quotes objectively examining this second translated work from Kang that makes The Vegetarian seem like a happy fairy tale.

But it had such a profound effect on me. I remember visiting South Korea with my family in the late 80's on vacation. I'm Canadian born and raised with parents that embrace and love their lives here in Canada - perhaps at the expense of a deliberate forgetting, if not tight-lipped stoicism of their pasts in Korea. I remember standing in a train station in Gwangju and seeing plastered on columns everywhere photos of the aftermath. These weren't the photojournalism shots we see of sweeping vistas of destruction taken from a remove, anonymous bodies strewn on a dusty roadway. They were almost pornographic. Close up shots of just what remained of a face, now looking remarkably like a halloween mask, the skull completely staved in from repeated bludgeoning. Gore and viscera displayed in a public transit station, multiple strangers in death for all to examine. Closely. Maybe that's what was in the chapbooks referenced in the book. I see them in my head now.

I'm a tourist. I've spent maybe a year total in South Korea. I have only the most rudimentary understanding of the language. I live a privileged, suburban, middle-class existence so take all my hand-wringing as me-too relevance seeking.

I've taught Dong-ho and kids his age in South Korea in small towns. I've been in the concrete sheds that pass for gymnasiums and walked the dirt packed floors of regional office buildings. I've passed by open fields where communities still burn all their garbage. I've witnessed the intense physicality of Koreans so at odds with the expansive space of Canada and personal boundaries.

And though I've never seen it I can imagine them all dead too. I can imagine 15 year old boys tending to hundreds of dead bodies with a matter of fact resolve. I can imagine teachers tortured, struck and humiliated. I can see them just as easily being the ones torturing, hitting and humiliating. In a country where every male has mandatory military service I see only a thin line between tortured and torturer.

And it just wrecks me. That's what a good writer is supposed to evoke but I can't call what this brings up as enjoyable. Kang dredges up so much of what is ugly and distorted and lays it out in a joyless manner and dares you to look away. I see little in the way of hope, and maybe that's more honest. If you liked The Vegetarian you're going to love Human Acts. It just leaves me cold.