Human Acts by Han Kang: A Review

Han Kang’s Human Acts opens in a most curious way. It’s told in the second person, which is a unique choice in itself, made more so as you begin to learn about the 15-year-old boy protagonist who is referred to as “you.”

You become more connected with the child as the chapter continues, as you become familiar with his situation, how in the midst of conflict and death he has taken the time to help catalog bodies in a temporary mortuary in hopes that he can help the grieving to identify their lost ones. It’s a dangerous job given the tumultuous climate, but he does it all the same. It’s not until the end of the second chapter, this one told from the perspective of a civilian corpse, that the pieces finally fall into place and you realize what was hinted at. You are dead.

This story isn’t about you, not really. It’s about Dong-ho, a victim of the Gwangju uprising in South Korea, and an acquaintance from Han Kang's past. There’s something powerful in the point of view. The words are made more poignant when Dong-ho’s mother vicariously becomes yours, when you read her soft words about him as if she was speaking of you.

This is Kang’s intention. Human Acts, although a commentary on the events in South Korea following the assassination of the dictator Park Chung-hee, is also a beautiful illustration of human nature and the inherent depravity within all of us.

Kang stresses the universality of violence in her novel. “The Cambodian government’s killed another 2 million of theirs. There’s nothing stopping us from doing the same” (Kang, 209). For Kang, the violence she depicts is not fiction, it is the past, the present, and the future. It is an inevitability that can only be prevented by bringing attention to it. As Kang writes:

It happened in Gwangju just as it did on Jeju Island, in Kwantung and Nanjing, in Bosnia, and all across the American continent when it was still known as the New World, with such a uniform brutality it’s as though it is imprinted in our genetic code. (140)

She reminds us that it is not culture or distance that separates us from the atrocities committed in her old hometown, that the destruction displayed is one that humanity as a whole is capable of, if just given the right circumstances.

I must confess that at first I did not realize what I was getting into by starting this novel. I assumed that what I was reading would act as a commentary on the Gwangju uprising in South Korea, and a criticism of the government and society that had allowed the massacre to take place. I was not expecting to find myself, and my own human nature, reprimanded.

Human Acts speaks of activism and speaking out even when it’s against one’s own country. I found myself inspired by Kang’s recount to become more aware of the actions of my own country, in hopes that I will be able to predict tragedy before it affects me specifically. Only then, if Kang is to be believed, can we restrict the very worst parts of human nature.

All this is not to say that Kang does not touch on her culture. Themes of familial support and prioritized education are extensive in her work. She describes nostalgic dishes from her childhood and details them with a clarity that leaves me with a longing for cuisine I’ve never even heard of, much less tasted. Simple details like barley tea and soboro ppang shared between friends show the care put into creating a thorough image of her culture. Kang paints South Korea with wonderful artistry, paying homage to her home despite the tragedies she portrays. If anything, it’s this contrast between her gentle country and the violent acts she writes that makes her message all the more powerful.

It is her own country committing these atrocities, and that makes it all the more difficult. When the nation is fighting another, when there is a common enemy, but when the nation is fighting itself, all deaths become senseless. Kang writes, “Why would you sing the national anthem for people who’d been killed by soldiers? Why cover the coffin with the Taegukgi [national flag]? As though it wasn’t the nation itself that had murdered them” (23). It’s a difficult but necessary story to tell, and at first Kang was hesitant to share it with a global audience. In the words of her translator, Deborah Smith, Kang “takes things deeply to heart, and was anxious that the translation maintain the moral ambivalence of the original” (5). Thanks to Smith’s efforts, the English version displays the strong empathy first shown in the original Korean, while still making it available to a larger audience.

It would be easy to dismiss Kang’s messages. After all, the US has not had a civil war in centuries, but it is precisely this relaxation that Kang warns against. A country can be much closer to conflict than one suspects, just as South Korea was. Already we see political divides continue to grow in the US and tensions rise in a way that would be unheard of only a few decades ago. Although we’re not to the point South Korea was at the time of the Gwangju uprising, it is vital that I, and all others who have felt the pain of Kang’s words, remain vigilant in watching for signs of violence and the conditions which allow the absolute worst of human nature to become apparent.

Despite the powerful and harrowing prose she uses to display the massacre, Kang finds a way to weave in the inherent beauty of human nature and her country. Kang’s novel is a comfort to those who have experienced grief at the hands of another human, and a warning to those who have yet to. It’s a caution to humanity, one that transcends culture and country. Kang’s writing tells us of Human Acts, the good and the bad.

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