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The Narrator
Yeong-chae is the youngest person imprisoned alongside Jin-su and the unnamed narrator. In his youth and bravery, Yeong-chae reminds Jin-su (often painfully) of Dong-ho. Yeong-chae tends to waver between adult strength and childlike innocence: he might lead the other prisoners in a beautiful, forbidden version of the national anthem, risking death, only to collapse into tears moments later at the mention of his favorite sweet foods (Fanta and sponge cake). Ten years after they were all jailed and tortured together, Jin-su reveals to the narrator that Yeong-chae has gone mad, ending up institutionalized after a violent outbreak.
Yeong-chae Quotes in Human Acts
The Human Acts quotes below are all either spoken by Yeong-chae or refer to Yeong-chae. 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 4: The Prisoner, 1990
Quotes
Kids crouching beneath the windows, fumbling with their guns and complaining that they were hungry, asking if it was OK for them to quickly run back and fetch the sponge cake and Fanta they'd left in the conference room; what could they possibly have known about death that would have enabled them to make such a choice?
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Explanation and Analysis:
At that moment, I realized what all this was for. The words that this torture and starvation were intended to elicit. We will make you realize how ridiculous it was, the lot of you waving the national flag and singing the national anthem. We will prove to you that you are nothing but filthy, stinking bodies. That you are no better than the carcasses of starving animals.
[…] Watery discharge and sticky puss, foul saliva, blood, tears and snot, piss and shit that soiled your pants. That was all that was left to me. No, that was what I myself had been reduced to. I was nothing but the sum of those parts. The lump of rotting meat from which they oozed was the only “me” there was.
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Explanation and Analysis:
Looking at that boy's life, Jin-su said, what is this thing we call a soul? Just some nonexistent idea? Or something that might as well not exist? Or no, is it like a kind of glass? Glass is transparent, right? And fragile. That's the fundamental nature of glass. And that's why objects that are made of glass have to be handled with care. After all, if they end up smashed or cracked or chipped, then they're good for nothing, right, you just have to chuck them away.
Before, we used to have a kind of glass that couldn't be broken. A truth so hard and clear it might as well have been made of glass. So when you think about it, it was only when we were shattered that we proved we had souls. Though what we really were was humans made of glass.
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Yeong-chae Quotes in Human Acts
The Human Acts quotes below are all either spoken by Yeong-chae or refer to Yeong-chae. 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 4: The Prisoner, 1990
Quotes
Kids crouching beneath the windows, fumbling with their guns and complaining that they were hungry, asking if it was OK for them to quickly run back and fetch the sponge cake and Fanta they'd left in the conference room; what could they possibly have known about death that would have enabled them to make such a choice?
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
At that moment, I realized what all this was for. The words that this torture and starvation were intended to elicit. We will make you realize how ridiculous it was, the lot of you waving the national flag and singing the national anthem. We will prove to you that you are nothing but filthy, stinking bodies. That you are no better than the carcasses of starving animals.
[…] Watery discharge and sticky puss, foul saliva, blood, tears and snot, piss and shit that soiled your pants. That was all that was left to me. No, that was what I myself had been reduced to. I was nothing but the sum of those parts. The lump of rotting meat from which they oozed was the only “me” there was.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Looking at that boy's life, Jin-su said, what is this thing we call a soul? Just some nonexistent idea? Or something that might as well not exist? Or no, is it like a kind of glass? Glass is transparent, right? And fragile. That's the fundamental nature of glass. And that's why objects that are made of glass have to be handled with care. After all, if they end up smashed or cracked or chipped, then they're good for nothing, right, you just have to chuck them away.
Before, we used to have a kind of glass that couldn't be broken. A truth so hard and clear it might as well have been made of glass. So when you think about it, it was only when we were shattered that we proved we had souls. Though what we really were was humans made of glass.
