Human Acts by Han Kang
I’d assumed they’d give the wound time to heal up once it had got into that state. I was wrong. I got to know a new pain instead, when the cotton wool was removed and the pen jammed back between the fingers, mashing that raw meat to a pulp.
There were five cells in total, laid out in a kind of fan shape. In the central area on the other side of the bars, the soldiers with their guns could keep watch over all five cells at the same time. When they first shoved us in and locked the doors behind us, not a single one of us dared to ask where they’d brought us. Even the kids from high school knew enough to keep their mouths shut. We stayed silent, avoided each other’s eyes. We needed time to process what we’d experienced that morning. A scant hour’s worth of silent despair, that was the last grace left to us as humans.
That black Monami biro would be there on the table every time I went into the interrogation room. Lying in wait. The first stage in a sequence which unfolded exactly the same way every time, the whole process seemingly designed to hammer home a single fact: that my body was no longer my own. That my life had been taken entirely out of my hands, and the only thing I was permitted to do now was to experience pain. Pain so intense I felt sure I was going to lose my mind, so horrific that I literally did lose control of my body, pissing and shitting myself.
Once the sequence had been brought to its usual conclusion, the questions began. The voice that asked the questions was never anything other than calm and composed, but whatever answer I made would inevitably bring the same result: a rifle butt to the face. I couldn’t fight the instinct that made me shrink back against the wall and shield my head with my arms, even though that only ever made things worse. When I fell down, they stamped on my back with their army boots. Only until I was just on the point of losing consciousness; then they would flip me over, and trample my shins instead.
Once you were told to leave the interrogation room and go back to your cell you might be forgiven for thinking that you’d be able to relax, to let your guard down a bit. But that would be a mistake.
We had to sit on the floor of the cell for hours at a time, shoulders and back ramrod straight. Eyes front, too, directly at the window. The sergeant would bark out a warning if your gaze even threatened to stray from those iron bars, and one older guy actually had a cigarette stubbed out on his eyelids as an example to the rest of us. One of the high school kids inadvertently scratched his neck, once; him, they beat until he lost consciousness and went as limp as a rag doll.
There were close on a hundred of us all told, wedged in so tight you could feel the knees of the guy behind you pressing into the small of your back. We sweated buckets; literally, it was like we’d been caught in a downpour. Our throats were screamingly dry, but we were only given water three times a day, with meals. I remember how savage, how animalistic that thirst was, how I would have jumped at the chance of literally anything to wet my lips, even a splash of urine would have done. And I remember the constant terror of thinking I might accidentally fall asleep. The terror of having a cigarette stubbed out on my eyelid, so vivid I could practically smell the singed flesh.
And the hunger, of course. How persistently it clung on, a translucent sucker attached to the nape of the neck. I remember those moments when, hazy with exhaustion and hunger, it seemed as though that sucker was slowly feeding on my soul.
Three times a day, every day, the meal we were given was exactly the same: a handful of rice, half a bowl of soup, and a few shreds of kimchi. And this was shared between two. The relief I felt when I was partnered with Kim Jin-su says something about the state I’d been reduced to at that point, a brute animal with whatever had once been human having been gradually sucked out. Why was I so relieved? Because he looked like he wouldn’t eat much. Because he was pale, with dark shadows around his eyes that made him look like he belonged in a hospital. Because of his empty, lifeless eyes.
A month ago, when I saw his obituary, those eyes were the first things I thought of. Those eyes that used to track my every movement as I fished out a beansprout from the watery soup; that regarded me in silence as I stared with open hatred at any morsel of food that passed his lips, consumed with the fear that he might take it all for himself; those cold, empty eyes, utterly devoid of anything that could be said to resemble humanity. Just like my own.
*
There’s something I still haven’t been able to figure out.
Given that I was partnered with Kim Jin-su and ate the exact same meals as him every single day, how come he died and I’m still living?
Was it that he suffered more than me?
No, it wasn’t that. I bore more than my fair share of suffering.
Was it that he got less sleep than me?
But sleep is still every bit as elusive for me as it was for him. Even now, there’s not a single night where I’m able to snatch more than a few hours of shallow rest, rest that barely deserves the name. And it’ll be like that for as long as this life clings to me.
When you first called me to ask about Kim Jin-su, professor, it made me wonder. Even after I’d arranged to meet you, after you called again, I was still wondering. Every day without exception, those same questions niggled away at me: why did he die, while I’m still alive?
Do you remember, professor, that first time we spoke, when you told me that Kim Jin-su was ‘by no means an isolated case’? According to you, it was more than likely that many of us former prisoners would end up taking our own lives.
I suppose you thought you were helping me? Trying to save my life from heading down that same sorry track? Yes, I can well imagine that those were the kind of noble ideas you had in mind. But when it came to it, this dissertation you were planning to write, was it really going to benefit anyone other than yourself?
You explained about the ‘psychological autopsy’ you wanted to conduct on Kim Jin-su, but I still couldn’t understand it. You wanted to record my testimony – what for? Would that bring Jin-su back to life? Our experiences might have been similar, but they were far from identical. What good could an autopsy possibly do? How could we ever hope to understand what he went through, he himself, alone? What he’d kept locked away inside himself for all those years.
It’s true that Jin-su did suffer some unusually brutal torture, even compared with the rest of us. Perhaps because there was something strangely delicate about him. Almost feminine. And somehow that rubbed the guards up the wrong way.
But I only heard these stories at least a decade after the fact. At the time, I had no idea.
What I heard was that the soldiers made him get his penis out and rest it on the table, threatening to cane it with a wooden ruler. Apparently, they made him strip and took him out to the patch of grass in front of the guardhouse, where they tied his arms behind his back and made him lie down on his stomach. The ants nibbled at his genitals for three hours.
I heard that after he was released, he had nightmares about insects almost every single night.
As for what he was like before then, I can’t help you. I only ever saw him from a distance, you see, striding down the corridors of the Provincial Office.
In 1980, when it happened, he was still only a freshman at university. The hair on his upper lip was little more than a scrubby patch of fluff, and he had these thick, dark lashes that stood out against his pale skin. Every time I saw him he seemed to be in a great hurry, his skinny arms swinging back and forth by his sides.
I know the kinds of things he was busy with, at least: dealing with the wounded, organising the treatment of the corpses, obtaining coffins and flags, arranging the funeral ceremonies … all that sort of thing.
You know, I really wouldn’t have predicted he’d stay behind on the last night. There were only the hardliners left at that point, and they were mainly workers. Most of the students, on the other hand, had called for the Provincial Office to be evacuated before the army re-entered the city, insisting that no more lives be needlessly thrown away. They left their own guns in the lobby and w
Twelve of us, including Jin-su and myself, formed one group. We gathered in the small conference room and made the usual introductions, though I’m pretty sure none of us imagined that our acquaintance would last beyond that night. We each made a cursory will, jotted down our names and addresses and slipped these into our shirt pockets, so we’d be easy to identify. All these things we were making contingency plans for, that were almost upon us, the strange thing is that they still didn’t actually seem real. At least, not until we heard over the wireless that the army had re-entered the city. We all tensed up then.
Around midnight, the militia chief called Jin-su out into the corridor and told him to get the women out of the building. This guy had such a voice on him, even those of us inside the conference room could hear every word he said. At the time, I guessed that the reason the chief had picked Jinsu to see the women to safety was because he’d decided our chances of holding out were hardly going to be affected by the absence of this fragile-looking young man. I remember watching Jin-su shouldering his gun and marching out of the room, his lips pressed into a thin line. That’s right, I remember thinking, if I were you I’d find somewhere safe to hole up, and not worry about rushing back.
So I was surprised, then, when he did come back. In the twenty-odd minutes since I’d last seen him the tension had completely drained from his face, but now he could barely keep his eyes open. He went straight over to the window, curled up on the faux-leather sofa and promptly fell asleep. When I went over and shook him awake he didn’t even open his eyes, just mumbled about how he was sorry, but he was tired, just so tired.
Strangely enough, his exhaustion seemed to infect the rest of us, sapping our energy, and one by one everyone ended up sitting on the floor, slumped against the nearest wall. Even I wasn’t immune – I couldn’t keep myself from curling up next to Jin-su on the sofa. How to explain it? It was precisely the time when we should have been one hundred per cent alert, and instead we allowed ourselves to succumb to drowsiness, sleep blanketing our eyes and ears.
Somehow, the sound of the door being cautiously inched open made it through the fog of unconsciousness, and I opened my eyes to see some kid slipping into the room – a middle-schooler, I could tell by his cropped hair. He crept over to the sofa and sat down with his back against it.
‘Who are you?’ My voice was hoarse with sleep. ‘Who are you, and where have you come from?’ He’d shut his eyes tight as soon as he sat down, and he kept them shut when he answered me.
‘I’m so tired. I’m just going to sleep for a minute or two, here with Jin-su.’
Jin-su had been sleeping like the dead, but that voice startled him awake.
‘Dong-ho?’ he demanded in a muffled whisper, seizing hold of the boy’s arm. ‘Didn’t I tell you to go home? Didn’t you promise you would?’ His voice was getting louder. ‘What the hell were you planning on doing here? You know how to fire a gun, do you?’
‘Don’t be angry, Jin-su,’ the boy ventured. There was a rustling sound, as those woken by the argument got stiffly to their feet.
‘You’ll surrender at the first opportunity,’ Jin-su insisted, still not letting go of the boy’s arm. ‘Surrender, have you got that? Go out with your hands up. There’s no way they’ll harm a kid with his hands up.’
In 1980 I was twenty-two, and I’d just gone back to university after completing my military service. I was planning on getting a job as a primary school teacher after I graduated, and maybe that was why they chose me to be our militia’s leader that night; because I was a little bit older, and had a steady head on my shoulders. For the most part, those who’d stayed behind in the Provincial Office were an unruly lot, and there wasn’t much in the way of discipline going round. More like a mob than an organised militia.
The majority were still in their teens. There was even one kid, who went to evening classes after his job, who just wouldn’t be convinced that, even if he loaded his gun and pulled the trigger, a bullet would actually come out. He went out to the yard and fired off a round into the night sky. Those of school age were the ones who baulked at being sent home. They were so stubborn, they needed a lengthy talking to before they were persuaded to leave.
The militia chief insisted on running through our ‘tactics’ with me, though the plan turned out to be so flimsy it barely warranted such a description. The army were predicted to arrive at the Provincial Office at around 2 a.m., so we started filing out into the corridor at half past one. One of the adults was stationed at each window, while the younger boys lay on their stomachs in the spaces in between, ready to take over if the person next to them got shot. I had no way of knowing what tasks the other teams had been assigned, or whether our overall strategy had any realistic chance of success. The chief kept emphasising that our aim was only to hold out until dawn, when hundreds of thousands of Gwangju’s citizens would stream out into the streets and mass around the fountain.
It sounds foolish now, but at the time we half-believed those words. We knew there was a chance we might die, yes, but privately we thought we’d be okay. We were anticipating defeat, but also, and at the same time, thinking that we might somehow manage to come through after all. This wasn’t just me; for most of us, especially the younger ones, our hopes outweighed our fears. We had no idea that, only the day before, a spokesman for our student militia had met with foreign journalists and announced that our defeat was certain. He’d told them that we all knew we were going to die, but that we weren’t afraid of death. Such noble conviction, transcending all fear; but it’s only the plain truth to say that this isn’t how it was for me.
As for Kim Jin-su’s thoughts on the matter, there’s no way for me to tell. When he chose to come back after seeing the women to safety, was he fully expecting this decision to result in his death? Or was he more like me, erring on the side of optimism – thinking that death was far from inevitable, that we would manage to hold the Provincial Office after all, then be able to live the rest of our lives free from shame?
It wasn’t as though we didn’t know how overwhelmingly the army outnumbered us. But the strange thing was, it didn’t matter. Ever since the uprising began, I’d felt something coursing through me, as overwhelming as any army.
Conscience.
Conscience, the most terrifying thing in the world.
The day I stood shoulder to shoulder with hundreds of thousands of my fellow civilians, staring down the barrels of the soldiers’ guns, the day the bodies of those first two slaughtered were placed in a handcart and pushed at the head of the column, I was startled to discover an absence inside myself: the absence of fear. I remember feeling that it was all right to die; I felt the blood of a hundred thousand hearts surging together into one enormous artery, fresh and clean … the sublime enormity of a single heart, pulsing blood through that vessel and into my own. I dared to feel a part of it.
At one o’clock in the afternoon, while the speaker in front of the Provincial Office was playing the national anthem, the soldiers opened fire. I’d been standing in the middle of the column of the demonstrators, but when the bullets came flying, I turned and ran. That sublime feeling that I’d been tapping into, that enormous heart I’d felt briefly a part of, was smashed to pieces, strewn over the ground as so much rubbish. And the gunfire wasn’t only in the square; snipers were also positioned on the roofs of the surrounding buildings. Beside me and in front of me people crumpled to the ground, but I kept on running. Only when I was sure I’d left the square far behind did I let myself stagger to a stop. I was so out of breath I genuinely thought my lungs would burst. My face a mask of sweat and tears, I sank to my knees on the steps leading up to a shop door. Its shutters were down. A small group had gathered in the street, and I heard them talking about raiding the police stations and reserves barracks to get guns. They were cle
One of them jogged off to fetch his truck, and I stayed there slumped on the steps until he drove back. I thought about whether I really had it in me to carry a gun, to point it at a living person and pull the trigger.
It was already late at night by the time the truck I was riding in returned to the centre. We’d twice taken a wrong turn, and when we’d got to the barracks we’d found that the guns had already been looted, so it turned out to be a wasted trip. In the meantime, I had no way of knowing how many had fallen in the street fighting. All I remember is the entrance to the hospital the following morning, the seemingly never-ending line of people queuing up to give blood; the doctors and nurses striding through the blasted streets, white gowns bloodstained, hands gripping stretchers; the women who handed up stale rice balls, water and strawberries to the truck I was riding in; the strains of the national anthem, and ‘Arirang’, which everyone was singing at the top of their voice. Those snapshot moments, when it seemed we’d all performed the miracle of stepping outside the shell of our own selves, one person’s tender skin coming into grazed contact with another, felt as though they were rethreading the sinews of that world heart, patching up the fissures from which blood had flowed, making it beat again. That was what captured me, what has stayed with me ever since. Have you even known it, professor – that terrifying intensity, that feeling as if you yourself have undergone some kind of alchemy, been purified, made wholly virtuous? The brilliance of that moment, the dazzling purity of conscience.