Nobel Prize winner Han Kang is a South Korean writer who rose to prominence for her novel The Vegetarian, an enigmatic book that (to me) seemed to be about the inferior position of women in South Korean culture; dysfunctional families; artistic obsession; and mental illness.
Nobel Prize Winner Han Kang
Han Kang's 2021 novel, 'We Do Not Part', now translated into English, is another cryptic novel that focuses on the consequences of bloody massacres that occurred in South Korea after World War II.
I'm not sure what would (or would be not) be spoilers for this unusual book. So just to be safe, I'll say there might be spoilers ahead.
When we meet the narrator of 'We Do Not Part', a Seoul writer called Kyungha, she's long parted from most of her family and friends, and is emerging from years of isolation.
Kyungha is plagued by migraines, stomach spasms and night terrors, which may be connected (in part) with Kyungha's research for her book about the massacre at G-. [Note: We can take this to be the Gwangju Uprising, a series of student-led demonstrations that occurred in Gwangju, South Korea in May 1980.]
Kyungha describes a recurring dream - which she's had for years - as follows: Snow is falling and thousands of black tree trunks jut from a low hill. They vary in height, like a crowd of people ranging in age. Stooped and listing, they give the impression of a thousand men, women and haggard children huddling in the snow. The sea is encroaching on these 'gravestones', and they need to be moved to safety.
Kyungha depicts some of her other disturbing dreams as follows:
"I can't recall the face of the uniformed man who kicked me in the flank as I lay sprawled on the ground and turned me over with his boots. What I do remember is the shudder that ran through me when he grabbed his gun with both hands and pushed the bayonet into my chest."
"Alongside women unknown to me, I climbed down the well, helping them to hold on to their children. We thought it would be safe down there, but without warning a shower of bullets rained down on us from above."
"When we stepped inside, the mass murderer was standing with his back to a wall.....Murderer, I thought I should say. I opened my mouth. Murderer.....What are you going to do about all the people you've killed, I said, using every last once of energy I had."
Kyungha's recurring dream about the black tree trunks inspires her to do a joint project with her friend Inseon - a photographer, documentarian, and carpenter.
Kyungha asks Inseon, 'What if we do something together? What if you and I were to plant logs in a field, dress them in black ink, and film them under falling snow?' Inseon agrees, and suggests they use a tract of land she inherited on the island of Jeju - Inseon's childhood home, to which she returned to care for her (now deceased) mother.
[Note: Jeju was the site of a slaughter that occurred between April 1948 and May 1949. The trouble began when communists and left-wing demonstrators, protesting government repression and the division of Korea, started burning police stations and government buildings. The South Korean government, in collaboration with the United States occupying forces, viciously quelled the uprising, and at least 30,000 people - men, women, and children - were massacred.]
Once the tree trunk project in underway, Kyungha cools to the idea. Inseon carries on, though, preparing log after log in her carpentry shop in Jeju. This leads to a shocking accident, and two of Inseon's right fingertips are severed. Inseon is quickly transported from Jeju to Seoul, to reattach the tips, and is now having painful injections every three minutes, 24 hours a day, to save her fingers.
Kyungha learns of Inseon's injury when she gets a text from her friend, asking her to come to the Seoul hospital right away. Kyungha rushes over, and Inseon implores the writer to go to Jeju IMMEDIATELY, to take care of Inseon's budgie, Ama, who'll otherwise die. Kyungha embarks on a nightmare trip to Inseon's remote house in Jeju - by plane, bus, and on foot - in the midst of a blizzard.
At one point, Kyungha falls into a dried-up stream bed, becomes encased in snow, and curls up in her coat to preserve her body heat. She observes, "My jaw throbs as if it might fall out from the incessant chattering, and I bear the pain by biting down on my stiff snow-covered sleeve to still my teeth." Kyungha struggles on and eventually reaches Inseon's house and carpentry shop, where reality combines with illusion.
At Inseon's home, Kyungha sees to Ama, clears snowdrifts, changes into dry clothes, and then.... weirdly......Inseon appears. "Her face was pale and gaunt, though not to the extent it had been in the hospital. She was rubbing her eyes with her right hand, which looked immaculate, entirely unscathed." Inseon gets a fire going, shows Kyungha the logs she prepared for the project, makes tea, and prepares juk. Kyungha isn't sure what's real and what isn't or who's alive and who's dead. It doesn't matter, because Inseon is there to share her mother's experiences during the South Korean uprisings.
Inseon admits, "I didn't really know my mum so well as it turns out....And all the while I thought I knew her." Inseon's mum, Jeongsim, never talked about the Jeju slaughter. But after Jeongsim died, Inseon found her mum's boxes, filled with newspaper clippings, photos, letters, and notes about the massacres of the 1950s. Jeongsim's brother (Inseon's uncle) disappeared during the chaos, and Jeongsim went to great lengths to find him, or at least to find a bit of his bone to bury. The book contains long segments about Jeongsim's memories of the time, and the tale is dreadful and sad.
While listening to Inseon's story, Kyungha recalls her own library research, done a few years ago.
Kyungha notes, "All afternoon, I read about how from mid-November of 1948, the uplands of Jeju burned for three months....By the spring of 1949, when the scorched-earth policy was temporarily abandoned after the state failed to find the whereabouts of the roughly hundred guerrillas, an estimated twenty thousand civilians were hiding out in Hallasan [Halla Mountain]....They had judged it safer to brave starvation and the cold than risk facing the summary executions along the shores......
Halla Mountain is in the center of Jeju
.....The commander who had been appointed to the island in March announced plans to sweep through Hallasan to eradicate all commie guerillas, and leaflet bombed the island to flush civilians out to the coast for the efficiency of their operations. Archive photos showed rows of emaciated men and women walking down slopes, shielding children and elders with their bodies even as they held up branches tied with white cloth, an entreaty to the soldiers not to shoot."
Of course the military reneged on its promise of safe passage, and rounded up people by the thousands. Many of these ended up in mass graves. The novel contains vivid descriptions of these harrowing incidents. The following passages illustrate some of the brutality perpetrated by the South Korean Military working with the United States occupying forces.
This passage depicts events at a cobalt mine in Gyeongsan: "Over many days, military trucks drove in and out of the mine. There are accounts from residents of how the sound of gunfire continued from early dawn to the middle of the night. When the drifts and shafts were full of corpses, they simply moved into the hills and went on killing and burying in a nearby valley."
These scenes were observed by a witness: "I hid under a blanket and listened to the gunfire. All the while my heart wouldn't stop trembling for the children I'd seen out on the sands. There were women holding babies as young as my son, and one woman looked like she'd give birth any day....It was growing dark when the guns stopped....I peeked out of the door again. The soldiers were hurling bodies into the ocean, and people lay bloodied, their faces in the sand."
Kyungha and Inseon's conversation reveals that Inseon has been suffering just as much as Kyungha, but in a different way. Inseon grew exhausted caring for her dying mum, who was ill with dementia. Then when Jeongsim passed, and Inseon found her mum's files, the documentarian felt compelled to visit massacre sites and fill in the gaps in Jeongsim's notes. This left terrible images in her mind.
In the end - though Kyungha may be in the midst of a fantasy - she feels she can proceed with the tree trunk project.
The book is filled with imagery of snow falling, and in an NPR interview, Han Kang explains why: “Snow; It falls between the sky and the earth and connecting them both. And it falls between the living and the dead, between light and darkness, between silence and memories. And I thought of the connection, the circular flow of water and air. We are all connected over this earth so I had this image of the snow. I wanted the snow to fall from beginning to end and I wanted even my characters to enter into that dream of snow.”
I find Han Kang's unconventional writing style somewhat difficult, but this is a memorable book. Highly recommended.
Note: For decades, the Jeju massacre was a forbidden topic in South Korea. The military dictatorships that controlled the country in the second half of the twentieth century tried to cover up the event. Now, the South Korean government has taken steps to address the historical injustices of the Jeju Uprising, including apologies, memorials, and educational programs to ensure future generations understand its significance.
Jeju City Peace Park with headstones marked “unknown”
Thanks to Netgalley, Han Kang, and Random House for a copy of the book.
Rating: 4 stars
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