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Intro
It’s May 1980, and Dong-ho is a middle-schooler living in Gwangju, a city on the southern tip of South Korea. Almost by accident, Dong-ho has become involved in the student protests against military dictator Chun Doo-hwan. Alongside fellow activists Eun-sook, Seon-ju, and Jin-su, Dong-ho helps clean and classify the bodies murdered by state soldiers. Dong-ho takes his job seriously, laying the Taegukgi over the dead and lighting candles to honor the corpses. Though most of the protestors are students, Dong-ho is the youngest of all, and his work worries both his mother and his middle brother.
A few days ago, Dong-ho watched as soldiers shot down his best friend, Jeong-dae, in the middle of a mass protest. Last week, Jeong-dae’s sister Jeong-mi (long the object of Dong-ho’s affections) disappeared. Dong-ho blames himself for both of these losses, obsessing over what happens to people’s “fluttering” souls when they die. Tonight, Chun Doo-hwan’s soldiers are coming back into Gwangju, and everyone knows there will be carnage. Dong-ho’s mother pleads with him to leave the Provincial Office where he works, but Dong-ho refuses, promising that he will be home by dinner.
The story shifts perspective, and now Jeong-dae, recently murdered, is narrating from beyond the grave. To his horror, Jeong-dae’s body has been taken to a clearing, where it is thrown at the bottom of a pile of corpses. Jeong-dae senses that his sister Jeong-mi has also been killed, and he longs to punish the soldiers who have murdered her. Though there are other souls in this clearing, Jeong-dae cannot figure out how to communicate with any of them. His only hope is to find Dong-ho and watch over his still-living friend.
After a few days, while his body rots and swells and turns black, Jeong-dae learns that the soldiers have come to burn the pile of corpses. He is initially relieved, believing that being rid of his body will allow his soul to roam Gwangju more freely. But as his body goes up in smoke, Jeong-dae realizes with despair that Dong-ho, too, has been murdered.
Five years later, Eun-sook is working in a book publisher’s office. While working on the company’s latest book, a Korean translation of some protest plays, Eun-sook is called into the police station for her involvement in the piece. While at the station, the interrogator slaps Eun-sook seven times. For the next week, Eun-sook resolves to forget one slap each day. Though years have passed, Eun-sook is still haunted by her memories of the Gwangju massacre, so she rarely leaves her house other than to go to work.
At the end of the week, Eun-sook brings the book to the censor’s office. She is horrified to see that the censors have blotted out entire pages (even though usually they only cross out a few words). But the play’s producer, Mr. Seo, is firm that the show will go on, honoring the victims of Gwangju even though Chun Doo-hwan’s government is still in power. When Eun-sook attends the premiere, she sees the actors silently mouthing the censored words. One young actor, wearing trackpants, reminds her of Dong-ho.
Five more years pass, and an unnamed narrator reflects on the months that he was imprisoned for protesting in Gwangju. While in prison, the narrator was forced to share all of his meals with the silent, effeminate Jin-su. Both men are subjected to many forms of torture, including one that involves mutilating their hands with a pen. The narrator contrasts the experience of feeling like “raw meat” in prison with the memories of protests, when he felt that he and the crowd of activists shared “the sublime enormity of a single heart.” Over the course of his time in prison, the narrator befriends Jin-su and a younger boy named Yeong-chae. Yeong-chae leads the prisoners in several small acts of protests, though he also bursts into tears whenever he thinks of his favorite sweet treats. In his innocence and courage, Yeong-chae reminds both the narrator and Jin-su of Dong-ho.
Now, Yeong-chae has been institutionalized and Jin-su has killed himself. The narrator, too, has struggled with alcoholism and depression, and he lashes out at the professor (Yoon) who is interviewing him about the Gwangju Uprising. The narrator believes that the only thing all humans have in common is their ability to be cruel to each other, like “ravening beast[s].”
In 2002, Seon-ju is working as an environmental activist. For the most part, she is secretive about her role in the Gwangju protests, ignoring Yoon’s requests for an interview. But when Seon-ju learns that her old friend, labor activist Seong-hee, has fallen gravely ill, she feels newly motivated to tell her story.
As Seon-ju tries to work up the nerve to visit Seong-hee in the hospital, she is haunted by regret, her narration interrupted by a series of confused, half-remembered vignettes (which the novel calls “Up Risings”). Finally, Seon-ju reveals the truth of what happened to her in the years after Gwangju: she was sexually assaulted, brutalized to the point that she can no longer have children or stand any form of sexual intimacy. Seon-ju blames herself for Dong-ho’s death, wishing she had sent him home instead of merely sharing gimbap with him. But Dong-ho’s memory also gives Seon-ju strength, and she resolves to keep going in tribute to the murdered young boy.
Eight years later, Dong-ho’s mother still sometimes hallucinates Dong-ho on the streets of Gwangju. She replays the day of her son’s death, wondering if she could have done more to bring him home and resenting the other young activists for refusing to let her grab Dong-ho before the killing began. Dong-ho’s mother also laments renting out the annex of their family hanok to Jeong-dae and Jeong-mi, though she knows Dong-ho’s friendship with Jeong-dae was a highlight of his life.
Dong-ho’s older brother has moved away, but usually when he visits, he and the middle brother fight, blaming each other for Dong-ho’s death. Meanwhile, Dong-ho’s mother gets to know other grieving parents, and they join together to protest, despite arrests and injuries. After Dong-ho’s father dies, however, Dong-ho’s mother loses steam. Now, all she can do is remember, thinking back to the poems Dong-ho used to create.
In 2013, the writer—a stand-in for author Han Kang herself—is beginning to write a book about the Gwangju protests, told from the perspective of Dong-ho and those who loved him. The writer has a personal connection to the uprising: her family used to live in the hanok that they then sold to Dong-ho’s parents. Though the writer moved to Seoul a few months before the protests began, the writer’s father stayed in touch with many friends in Gwangju.
The more the writer studies the Gwangju protests, visiting the 5:18 Research Institute and the house where she used to live, the more she becomes obsessed with Dong-ho and the pain he suffered. Before she leaves Gwangju, the writer visits Dong-ho’s grave, lighting a candle to pay her respects.
