Human Acts: Chapter 4: The Prisoner, 1990 Summary & Analysis

A university professor is interviewing an unnamed narrator. The narrator recalls being tortured with a black Monami Biro, an otherwise ordinary pen that became an instrument of tremendous pain. Over and over again, the interrogator would jam the pen into the narrator’s left hand, leaving his right hand undamaged so he could write his confession. By the end of the torture, the narrator’s left hand was a pulp of “raw meat.”

When the narrator was first arrested, none of the prisoners dared to ask where they were or even to speak. Each interrogation began with some physical torture, confirming to the narrator “that my life had been taken out of my own hands, and the only thing I was permitted to do now was to experience pain.” The interrogators would ask questions calmly, but the answers the prisoners gave them were never sufficient. And when the interrogators sent the narrator back to his cell, they made him sit completely straight against the wall as guards shouted at him and the other prisoners, denying them food and water. The men weren’t even allowed to fall asleep.

Three times a day, the guards fed the prisoners. The narrator was paired with Kim Jin-su, who ate little. As they shared their small portions, the narrator felt Kim Jin-su’s eyes follow him, devoid of life. Now, Jin-su has recently died, having taken his own life. As the narrator speaks with the professor, he wonders why he was able to survive while Jin-su was not.

The narrator becomes frustrated, wondering why the professor would want to dredge up all his most painful memories with this interview. Besides, Jin-su’s experiences were not identical to the narrator’s. Because of Jin-su’s somewhat feminine features, he was subjected to whole other forms of torture, as when the guards would unleash ants to nibble on his genitals.

In 1980, during the uprising, Jin-su was still only a freshman in college. The narrator did not know Jin-su well, so he was surprised when Jin-su decided to stay behind that night the soldiers came back into town. The narrator recalls that night: together, he and Jin-su make wills, preparing for death. Even after Jin-su is ordered to escort the women home, he comes back, ready to face the army as bravely as he could.

But as the army approaches, Jin-su suddenly finds himself overcome with tiredness. He lays down, and soon the rest of the protestors join him, as if Jin-su’s sleepiness is contagious. At one point in his nap, the narrator wakes to see Dong-ho crawling in beside him. Jin-su is scolding Dong-ho, telling him to go home. When Dong-ho refuses, Jin-su only make him promise that when the soldiers come, he will surrender right away.

The narrator was 22 at the time, one of the oldest members of the resistance. Even though the narrator knew rationally that the army wildly outnumbered them, he could not help feeling the force of “conscience, the most terrifying thing in the world.” Similarly, even as a spokesman for the student militia told journalists that everyone was prepared to die, most of the students themselves felt more hope that they would survive than fear that they would be killed.

When the narrator first started protesting, he was amazed by the sense of strength and unity he found in crowds, singing the national anthem as if he could feel “the sublime enormity of a single heart.” But when the bullets and tanks came, that unity was shattered. As the narrator faced the fallout the next day, the lines outside the hospital and the looted guns, he wanted only to regain his feeling in the crowd—“the miracle of stepping outside the shell of our own selves.”

 The narrator and Jin-su were old enough to make this decision for themselves, but Dong-ho was not. He was more concerned with sponge cake than with this grave choice. The narrator doesn’t know exactly what happened when the soldiers arrived. He only knows that no one in the resistance fired their guns (because they did not know how to) and that Jin-su made Dong-ho promise to “look for a way to live.”

Later, the narrator found out that the army had been given 800,000 bullets—enough to shoot every person in Gwangju twice. The narrator knows that the people in the student militia who were killed that night spared many more others from a similar fate. Those who were not killed were jailed, punished according to whether they were found holding guns.

Those who were not holding guns were released in batches. But those whom the soldiers had found holding guns experienced even more extreme forms of torture: “hairpin torture” and a horrific procedure known as the “roast chicken.” Looking back, the narrator begins to realize the purpose of such tactics—the army was trying to make these men feel ridiculous, as if their resistance was only ever a joke. The narrator thinks back to his hungry, horrible days in prison.

The youngest prisoner, a quiet, brave boy with a stutter, is named Kim Yeong-chae. Every so often, Jin-su talks to Yeong-Chae; he tells Yeong-Chae he does not need to use honorifics with him, as they are around the same age and come from the same region. As the narrator gets to know Yeong-Chae, he learns that the boy lost his cousin in a protest. But though Yeong-Chae tells the story of his cousin’s death with dry eyes, when Jin-su asks his favorite foods—sponge cake and Sprite—he bursts into tears. Yeong-Chae is being tortured, too.

In the present, the narrator tells the professor that every time he sweats in summer, he remembers how he felt in this era of torture: that he was no more than sticky flesh and pus. In those times, as his shoulders or toes were forced apart, the narrator would do anything to end the pain; he remembers shouting “for God’s sake stop, I did wrong.”  

A few months later, the narrator recalls, the soldiers convened a makeshift court. Thirty men were sentenced at a time, as guards forced them to bow their heads and patrolled the seats of the courtroom with their guns. The prisoners were told that if they spoke or even lifted their heads, they would be immediately killed in their seats. But on the day of the narrator’s group trial, Yeong-Chae began to sing the national anthem. The rest of the men soon joined in, singing softly but clearly. To everyone’s surprise, the soldiers let their prisoners finish the song.

The narrator explains that he was given a nine-year sentence, and Jin-su was given seven years. But these sentences didn’t really mean anything: the men were released in batches, as if even the soldiers knew the charges were absurd. Two years after being released, the narrator sees Jin-su again. But though time has passed, neither man has been able to accomplish anything—not go back to school, move out, or even date. The memory of the interrogation room is still too fresh.

In the present, both men have become reliant on alcohol to get any rest, so they split a bottle of soju until neither of them are really conscious. Then, this becomes a ritual: for years, Jin-su and the narrator meet to lament their loneliness and inability to work, as they swap alcohol or painkillers and try their best to forget. Neither man can even fathom the idea of taking revenge—they are too exhausted. Every so often, Jin-su laughs at the fact that they thought guns—which none of them had ever fired—could protect them.

In 1989, the narrator finally starts working as a taxi driver. One rainy night, Jin-su approaches the narrator after his taxi shift. Jin-su looks even more devastated than usual, and as the narrator welcomes Jin-su into his apartment, he feels real fear. Finally, Jin-su explains that there was a trial, and Yeong-chae has been sentenced to life in a psychiatric hospital. Apparently, Yeong-Chae tried to kill someone after trying to kill himself six times. The narrator can’t bear to hear this story, so he pours himself a glass of soju, excuses himself, and goes to bed.

As he told this story, Jin-su wondered aloud what a soul was, desperate to know what Yeong-chae lost when the torturers abused him. “It was only when we were shattered that we proved we had souls,” Jin-su reflected. After the torture, “what we really were was humans made of glass.”

Shortly after that visit, the narrator reads about Jin-su’s death in the newspaper. There are not enough coffin-bearers at Jin-su’s funeral, so the narrator volunteers, though he leaves before the service is over. The narrator never read Jin-su’s suicide note, nor did he look at the photo that accompanied the note, which showed several young children dead in a straight line. Now, in the story’s present, the narrator is livid that the professor is asking him about these things, even if it is for the purpose of his scholarly, “psychological autopsy.”

On that day in Gwangju, the narrator and Jin-su lay with their faces down while the soldiers taunted them (“I was in Vietnam, you sons of bitches”). Eventually, five of the youngest members of the resistance came down, including Dong-ho. None of these boys had any weapons, and they all walked out in a straight line with their arms up. In the present, the narrator tells the professor that the kids were lying in a straight line because they were shot in a straight line—“with both arms in the air, just like we’d told them to.”

 The narrator reflects that “some memories never heal.” Instead, these rare memories are so painful that everything else fades away. The narrator wonders if “the experience of cruelty” is the only thing every human being shares: the idea that “each one of us is capable of being reduced to an insect, a ravening beast, a lump of meat.” Once, a soldier in Busan revealed to the narrator that the army incentivized extra brutality with cash prizes.

Indeed, the narrator believes that many of the soldiers who came to Gwangju were remembering moments in the Korean or Vietnam wars where violence was met with a “handsome reward.” The narrator feels that every member of the human race is capable of such cruelty—including people like himself and the professor. Every day, the narrator looks at the scar on his hand from the pen. “So tell me professor,” the narrator asks, “what answers do you have for me? You, a human being just like me.”