The Gwangju Uprising was a series of anti-government protests which occurred in 1980. Back then military dictator Chun Doo-hwan, acting as President, implemented martial law across South Korea. Many took issue with both Chun Doo-hwan's usurpation of executive authority and the harsh regime he represented, and in response many workers and students in Gwangju took to the streets to voice their opposition. Both their uprising and the government's violent response to it form a dark chapter in South Korean history, and it is this harsh episode which is the subject of Han Kang's novel.
Human Acts tells the story of the Gwangju Uprising from several different perspectives. We see this momentous event through the eyes of one of the students who lived through it, through the memories of a former factory girl involved in the labor movement, and even through the eyes of a corpse left to rot in an out of the way location. The multiple perspectives on this same event cross over one another in surprising ways, and often converge around the figure of Dong-ho, a middle school student killed by the army very early on in the novel.
It's a fully realized account of an event which few outside of South Korea are familiar with. The author was clearly consumed by the event upon which she was writing, and even though the extremely dark subject matter was hard to get through at times, I'm still glad that I came upon this book, and saw it through to the end.
Author Han Kang was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature last year. I've seen copies of The Vegetarian in local bookstores, and I might read that one once I've finished a few other books first.
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