“Human Acts” is a moving novel that deals with the harsh realities of the Gwangju Uprising and its lingering psychological and moral effects on the people of South Korea. The novel indicates that violence is not always a standalone phenomenon but is often linked with other violent events, as evidenced by the fact that soldiers who had perpetrated violence during the Vietnam War brought their experiences with them when they arrived at Gwangju. Once violence has been unleashed, there is no going back, no return to a time before its existence.
The novel, against the backdrop of the political unrest that followed the assassination of President Park Chung-hee, recounts the events surrounding the protest for democracy, the escalating nature of the protest, and the brutal response by the military. The novel commences with the killing of a boy, Dong-ho, and proceeds through various time periods, narrators, and perspectives, all of whom are affected by the events of the massacre.
Han Kang, drawing from her personal experiences with Gwangju, combines reality with personal narratives, making for a compelling read. The novel has a fluid narrator, often addressing a haunting figure, “You,” which is a metaphor for a fragmented self, one that has become alienated from their true self, their humanity.
The novel, despite dealing with harsh realities, humanises political violence through its focus on individual experiences, and ultimately raises a pertinent question on humanity: what does it mean to be human, and how do we stay human in the face of extreme brutality, without providing answers but rather asking the reader to witness.
Han Kang – Prose. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach 2026. Sat. 28 Mar 2026. <https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/2024/han/prose/>
This morning, when you asked how many dead were being transferred from the Red Cross hospital today, Jin-su’s reply was no more elaborate than it needed to be: thirty. While the leaden mass of the anthem’s refrain rises and falls, rises and falls, thirty coffins will be lifted down from the truck, one by one. They will be placed in a row next to the twenty-eight that you and Jin-su laid out this morning, the line stretching all the way from the gym to the fountain. Before yesterday evening, twenty-six of the eighty-three coffins hadn’t yet been brought out for a group memorial service; yesterday evening this number had grown to twenty-eight, when two families had appeared and each identified a corpse. These were then placed in coffins, with a necessarily hasty and improvised version of the usual rites. After making a note of their names and coffin numbers in your ledger, you added ‘group memorial service’ in parentheses; Jin-su had asked you to make a clear record of which coffins had already gone through the service, to prevent the same ones being brought out twice. You’d wanted to go and watch, just this one time, but he told you to stay at the gym.
Reference:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/feb/13/human-acts-han-kang-review-south-korea
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