South Korea made headlines last year for two factors. Han Kang won the renowned Nobel Prize for literature in October, and the next was much less encouraging. Yoon Suk Yeol, the region’s leader, quickly declared martial law at midnight on December 3rd, 2024, the first time this had occurred since the nation’s transition to democracy in 1987.
The court’s decision to declare martial law effective at 1 is was quashed by protesters and lawmakers in the streets.
Yoon’s arrest came at the end of the conflict on January 26. The constitutional court of South Korea has yet to rule on Yoon’s impeachment, leaving the region’s political future uncertain. Protests and counterprotests are still taking place.
At a press conference held at the Nobel Museum in Stockholm on December 6th, 2024, 54-year-old Kang made an appearance. In the end, her observations about the upcoming activities in South Korea were optimistic. ” I, also, watched as people embraced armed men, de-escalate, and stood strong against approaching troops,” she said.” I watched as people tried to stop tank with their bare hands. These instances” showed their confidence and sincerity.”
The spirit of Kang’s function is this disagreement between acts of violence and those of passion. Her books provide a crucial framework for comprehending Asian history and politics and illustrating the suffering and resilience of the Korean people.
Animal Acts: The Uprising in the Gwangju
In her Nobel lesson, Kang describes having a photobook of the Gwangju massacre at home as a child. How are people this violent, she wondered,” How are people this violent?” After the discovery, she left her with lasting issues. And still, how are they able to stand up to such enormous violence at the same time?
Yoon’s most new action echoed Chun Doo Hwan’s call for military law 44 years earlier. The military cruelly reprimanded a university protest on May 18, 1980, killing students and employees with clubs, bayonets, and firearms.
However, the Gwangju population turned on themselves, seizing arms, and forming a politician’s army that forced the soldiers to leave the town. People occupied Gwangju for weeks before the men returned and killed more local residents.
Human Acts, which spans 23 times, explores the Gwangju experience from a variety of perspectives, capturing both the uprising’s events and its future in the minds and bodies of the participants. The military suppression is still fresh in the minds of several South Korean citizens, and it is what sparked their march on December’s streets.
Violence against women: The Vegetarian
The Vegetarian, Kang’s best-known book in the UK, uses various viewpoints to inform Yeong-hye’s story, a woman who decides to stop eating meat first, then to stop entirely.
The Vegetarian raises complex issues of collusion and suffering. The patriarch world of Korea’s society is reflected in the frequently abusive behaviors of Yeong-hye’s spouse, brother-in-law, and father.
South Korea is still a seriously patriarchal and cruel nation with a proverbial culture of harassment, intimidation, and violence against women at work, home, and online despite its rapid economic growth.
Yoon abused these sex conflicts by running for president in 2022 on a system that denied the existence of gender inequality and threatened to end the government of family and gender equality. It should come as no surprise that people have spearheaded protests against Yoon and military rules.
The Jeju revolt is known as We Do Not Part.
We Do Not Part, Kang’s next book, fuses the events of the Jeju rebellion with Kyungha, a poet who travels from Seoul to Jeju isle at the invitation of her friend Inseon. Inseon sends Kyungha to care for her favorite pet birds, which she had been hospitalized for after an accident. Kyungha sets out on a shadowy investigation of the island’s aggressive past once more.
The residents of Jeju protested the section of the nation during the troubled time between the Japanese occupation and the Asian conflict. People suspected of being affiliated with the Workers Party of Korea was launched into a scorched-earth campaign by police and soldiers.
One eighth of the region’s population was estimated to have died between 25 000 and 30 000 people. The state didn’t acknowledge the rebellion and subsequent slaughter until President Kim Dae-jung commissioned an analysis in January 2000.
These events ‘ injustice and tragedy may properly be expressed. However, trust permeates the actions of ordinary people despite the crushing dreariness of Kang’s books. In-hye, Yeong-hye’s girl, cares for her as she gets more and more into her disease in The Vegetarian.
The family of the murdered girl Dong-ho, who was a kid, finds pleasure in Human Acts by saying,” Why are we walking in the dark, let’s go over it, where the plants are blooming.
The sweet descriptions of birds in We Do Not Part serve as reminders of both the weakness and resilience of life. Our relationship with others is a source of hope and resilience in Kang’s writing. We continue to live in this short, harsh world in this manner.
At the University of Strathclyde, Jessica Widner teaches English and creative reading.
This content was republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Study the article’s introduction.