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Yeong-chae
Seon-ju is one of the students who worked in the Provincial Office, dealing with the corpses left by the Gwangju massacre and protesting against Chun Doo-hwan. Unlike most of the other protestors, Seon-ju’s entire life has been defined by various forms of activism. Before the Gwangju protests, Seon-ju worked alongside her close friend Seong-hee, organizing for labor rights. After the protests, Seon-ju goes to work at an environmental organization, helping to advocate against the use of radioactive substances. Whenever she is jailed for these various forms of resistance, Seon-ju is brutalized and sexually assaulted, leaving her unable to have children or even conceive of intimacy with men. When Yoon asks to interview Seon-ju for his oral history, she is initially reluctant. But memories of the fearless Seong-hee, now in the hospital, eventually encourage her to speak up.
Seon-ju Quotes in Human Acts
The Human Acts quotes below are all either spoken by Seon-ju or refer to Seon-ju. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 5: The Factory Girl, 2002
Quotes
The repeated words from Yoon’s e-mail, a pianist hammering the same keys, flicker in your mind’s eye like a cursor blinking on a computer screen. Testimony. Meaning. Memory. For the future.
[…] Again, you experienced that moment when the contours of suffering coalesce into clarity, a clarity colder and harder than any nightmare could ever be. The moment when you are forced to acknowledge that what you experienced was no mere dream.
[…] Yoon has asked you to remember. To face up to those memories, to bear witness to them. But how can such a thing be possible?
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Some weekend afternoon when the sun-drenched scene outside the window seems unusually still and Dong-ho’s profile flips into your mind, mightn’t the thing flickering in front of your eyes be what they call a soul? In the early hours of the morning, when dreams you can’t remember have left your cheeks wet and the contours of that face jolt into an abrupt clarity, mightn’t that wavering be a soul’s emergence? And the place they emerged from, that they waver back into, would it be as black as night or dusk's coarse weave? Dong-ho, Jin-su, the bodies at your own hands washed and dressed, might they be gathered there in that place, or are they sundered, several, scattered? You are aware that, as an individual, you have the capacity for neither bravery nor strength.
If I demanded that you go home, Dong-ho; if I’d begged, while we sat there eating gimbap, you would have done as I asked, wouldn’t you?
And that’s why you’re coming to me now.
To ask why I’m still alive.
You walk, your eyes red rim seeming carved with some keen blade. Hurrying back to the bright lights of the emergency department.
There’s only one thing for me to say to you, onni.
If you’ll allow me to.
If you'll please allow me.
[…] As you walk along the straight white line that follows the center of the road, you raise your head to the falling rain.
Don’t die.
Just don’t die.
Epilogue: The Writer, 2013
Quotes
There was something meek and gentle about those single-lidded half-moon eyes. The traces of infancy still lingered in the soft line of his jaw. It was a face so utterly ordinary you could easily have mistaken it for that of another, a face whose characteristics would be forgotten the moment you turned away from it.
Get the entire Human Acts LitChart as a printable PDF.
Seon-ju Quotes in Human Acts
The Human Acts quotes below are all either spoken by Seon-ju or refer to Seon-ju. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 5: The Factory Girl, 2002
Quotes
The repeated words from Yoon’s e-mail, a pianist hammering the same keys, flicker in your mind’s eye like a cursor blinking on a computer screen. Testimony. Meaning. Memory. For the future.
[…] Again, you experienced that moment when the contours of suffering coalesce into clarity, a clarity colder and harder than any nightmare could ever be. The moment when you are forced to acknowledge that what you experienced was no mere dream.
[…] Yoon has asked you to remember. To face up to those memories, to bear witness to them. But how can such a thing be possible?
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Some weekend afternoon when the sun-drenched scene outside the window seems unusually still and Dong-ho’s profile flips into your mind, mightn’t the thing flickering in front of your eyes be what they call a soul? In the early hours of the morning, when dreams you can’t remember have left your cheeks wet and the contours of that face jolt into an abrupt clarity, mightn’t that wavering be a soul’s emergence? And the place they emerged from, that they waver back into, would it be as black as night or dusk's coarse weave? Dong-ho, Jin-su, the bodies at your own hands washed and dressed, might they be gathered there in that place, or are they sundered, several, scattered? You are aware that, as an individual, you have the capacity for neither bravery nor strength.
If I demanded that you go home, Dong-ho; if I’d begged, while we sat there eating gimbap, you would have done as I asked, wouldn’t you?
And that’s why you’re coming to me now.
To ask why I’m still alive.
You walk, your eyes red rim seeming carved with some keen blade. Hurrying back to the bright lights of the emergency department.
There’s only one thing for me to say to you, onni.
If you’ll allow me to.
If you'll please allow me.
[…] As you walk along the straight white line that follows the center of the road, you raise your head to the falling rain.
Don’t die.
Just don’t die.
Epilogue: The Writer, 2013
Quotes
There was something meek and gentle about those single-lidded half-moon eyes. The traces of infancy still lingered in the soft line of his jaw. It was a face so utterly ordinary you could easily have mistaken it for that of another, a face whose characteristics would be forgotten the moment you turned away from it.
