Han Kang Human Acts Quotes

After you died I could not hold a funeral, And so my life became a funeral.

Is it true that human beings are fundamentally cruel? Is the experience of cruelty the only thing we share as a species? Is the dignity that we cling to nothing but self-delusion, masking from ourselves the single truth: that each one of us is capable of being reduced to an insect, a ravening beast, a lump of meat? To be degraded, slaughtered - is this the essential of humankind, one which history has confirmed as inevitable?

Soundlessly, and without fuss, some tender thing deep inside me broke. Something that, until then, I hadn't even realized was there.

Some memories never heal. Rather than fading with the passage of time, those memories become the only things that are left behind when all else is abraded. The world darkens, like electric bulbs going out one by one. I am aware that I am not a safe person.

I'm fighting alone, every day. I fight with the hell that I survived. I fight with the fact of my own humanity. I fight with the idea that death is the only way of escaping this fact.

After you died I couldn't hold a funeral, So these eyes that once beheld you became a shrine. These ears that once heard your voice became a shrine. These lungs that once inhaled your breath became a shrine.

This rain is tears shed by the souls of the departed.

I never let myself forget that every single person I meet is a member of this human race. And that includes you, professor, listening to this testimony. As it includes myself.

Why would you sing the national anthem for people who’d been killed by soldiers? Why cover the coffin with the Taegukgi? As though it wasn’t the nation itself that had murdered them.

Bearing that in mind, the question which remains to us is this: what is humanity? What do we have to do to keep humanity as one thing and not another?

I still remember the moment when my gaze fell upon the mutilated face of a young woman, her features slashed through with a bayonet. Soundlessly, and without fuss, some tender thing deep inside me broke. Something that, until then, I hadn't realised was there.

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. That what we really were was humans made of glass.

I never let myself forget that every single person I meet is a member of this human race.

A soul doesn't have a body, so how can it be watching us?

But at the same time you know that if a time like that spring were to come around again, and even knowing what you know now, you might well end up making a similar choice to the one you'd made then.

Why are we walking in the dark, let's go over there, where the flowers are blooming.

After you were lost to us, all our hours declined into evening. Evening are our streets and our houses. In this half-light that no longer darkens nor lightens, we eat, and walk, and sleep.

It happened in Gwangju just as it did on Jeju Island, in Kwantung and Nanking, in Bosnia, and all across the American continent when it was still known as the New World, with such uniform brutality it's as though it is imprinted in our genetic code.

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 in side 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.

You are aware that, as an individual, you have the capacity for neither bravery nor strength.

After you died I couldn’t hold a funeral, So these eyes that once beheld you became a shrine. These ears that once heard your voice became a shrine. These lungs that once inhaled your breath became a shrine.

Please, write your book so that no one will ever be able to desecrate my brother's memory again.

The body that had caused me such shame was going to be devoured by the flames--that was no cause for regret. I wanted to pare myself down to a simpler existence, just as I had while I'd still been alive. I was determined not to be afraid of anything.

I'm fighting, alone, every day. I fight with the hell that I survived. I fight with the fact of my own humanity. I fight with the idea that death is the only way of escaping this fact.

Some memories never heal. Rather than fading with the passage of time, those memories become the only thing that are left behind when all else is abraded.

I looked on in silence as my face blackened and swelled, my features turned into festering ulcers, the contours that had defined me, that had given me clear edges, crumbled into ambiguity, leaving nothing that could be recognized as me.

The ordinary soldiers were following the orders of their superiors. How can you call them the nation?” You found this confusing, as though it had answered an entirely different question to the one you’d wanted to ask.

March 24, 2018 How long do souls linger by the side of their bodies? Do they really flutter away like some kind of bird? Is that what trembles the edges of the candle flame?

The flowers that bloom in spring, the willows, the raindrops and snowflakes became shrines. The mornings ushering in each day, the evenings that daily darken, became shrines.

Some memories never heal. Rather than fading with the passage of time, those memories become the only things that are left behind when all else is abraded. The world darkens, like electric bulbs going out one by one. I am aware that I am not a safe person.

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. —

Summer nights, washing my neck and back in the yard. The rope of cold water you pumped into the metal pail, scattering into brilliant jewels as you splashed it over my sweat-gummed skin. Remember how you laughed, watching me shudder and oooh.

Is it possible to bear witness to the fact that I ended up despising my own body, the very physical stuff of my self? That I will fully destroy the warmth, any affection whose intensity was more than I could bear, and ran away? To somewhere colder, somewhere safer. Purely to stay alive.

...A reminder of the human acts of which we are all capable, the brutal and the tender, the base and the sublime.

Bearing that in mind, the question which remains to us is this: what is humanity? What do we have to do to keep humanity as one thing and not another?

When you died I could not hold a funeral, so my life became a funeral.

If I could hide in dreams. Or perhaps in memories.

Conscience, the most terrifying thing in the world.

I never let myself forget that every single person i meet is a member of this human race. And that includes you, professor, listening to this testimony. As it includes myself... I'm fighting, alone, every day. I fight with the hell that I survived. I fight with the fact of my own humanity. I fight with the idea that death is the only way of escaping this fact. So tell me, professor, what answers do you have for me? You, a human being just like me.

All the same, there was something infinitely noble about how his body still bore the traces of hands that had touched it, a tangible record of having been cared for, been valued, that made me envious and sad. Mine, on the other hand, crushed out of shape beneath a tower of others, was shameful, detestable. From that moment on, I was filled with hatred for my body. Our bodies, tossed there like lumps of meat. Our filthy, rotting faces, reeking in the sun.

Work is a guarantee of solitude. Living a solitary life; you are able to let the regular rhythm of long hours of work followed by brief rest carry you through the days, with no time to fear the outer dark beyond the circle of light

I'd been mistaken when I'd thought of them as victims. They'd stayed behind precisely to avoid such a fate. When I think of those ten days in the life of that city, I think of the moment when a man who'd been lynched, almost killed, found the strength to open his eyes. The moment when, spitting out fragments of teeth along with a mouthful of blood, he held his failing eyes open with his fingers so he could look his attacker straight in the face. The moment when he appeared to remember that he has a face and a voice, to recollect his own dignity, which seemed the memory of a previous life.

I can't get my head around why I didn't just call your name that day. Why I just came tottering on behind, struggling for breath and dumb as a mute. If I call your name next time, will you please just turn around? You don't need to say 'yes, mum?' or anything like that. Just turn round so I can see you.

Gripped by this familiar shame, she thought of the dead, for whom the absence of life meant they would never be hungry again. But life still lingered on for her, with hunger still a yoke around her neck. It was that which had tormented her for the past five years – that she could still feel hunger, still salivate at the sight of food.

How is it, she wonders, that a face can so effectively conceal what lies behind it? How is it not indelibly marked by such callousness, brutality, murderousness?

Her death was every bit as quiet and understated as she herself had been

It's the soldiers, not him, that your death should have weighed on, so why did he grow so old before his time, so much quicker than all his friends?

بعد أن فقدناك استحالت كل أيامنا مساءً. بات المساء شارعنا وبيتنا. في ذلك الضوء الشاحب الذي لم يعد يُضيء الحياة أو يُظلِمها، نأكل ونمشي وننام.

Dong-ho, I need you to take my hand and guide me away from all this. Away to where the light shines through, to where the flowers bloom.

there will be no forgiveness. Least of all for me.

an absence inside myself: the absence of fear. I remember feeling it was all right to die.

بقى السؤال الذي يفرض نفسه علينا هو : ماهي الإنسانية ؟ ما الذي نفعل لنحافظ على الإنسانية بحيث تحمل مدلولاً معينًا وليس آخر ؟

The sound woke me up, but I didn't have the courage to open my eyes, so I kept them closed and strained to listen in the darkness.

Though it's now close to midnight, the wind is still heavy with heat.

Some memories never heal. Rather than fading with the passage of time, those memories become the only things that are left behind when all else is abraded.

How long do souls linger by the side of their bodies? Do they really flutter away like some kind of bird? Is that what trembles the edges of the candle flame?

Enduring things is what you do best. Gritting your teeth and bearing them.

Even if the victim dies, even if their body is cremated, leaving nothing but the charred remains of bone, that substance cannot be obliterated.

After you died I could not hold a funeral And so my life became a funeral. Oh, return to me. Oh, return to me when I call your name. Do not delay any longer. Return to me now. After you died I couldn't hold a funeral, So these eyes that once beheld you became a shrine. These ears that once heard your voice became a shrine. These lungs that once inhaled your breath became a shrine. The flowers that bloom in spring, the willows, the raindrops and snowflakes became shrines. The morning ushering in each day, the evenings that daily darken, became shrines. After you died I couldn't hold a funeral, so my life became a funeral. After you were wrapped in a tarpaulin and carted away in a garbage truck, After sparkling jets of water sprayed unforgivably from the fountain. Everywhere the lights of the temple shrines are burning. In the flowers that bloom in spring, in the snowflakes. In the evenings that draw each day to a close. Sparks from the candles, burning in empty drinks bottles.

I prayed every night. I don't mean anything formal, I'd never been a regular at any temple or church. I just asked to be set free from that hell. But they were answered, you see, my prayers were answered.

Is it true that human beings are fundamentally cruel? Is the experience of cruelty the only thing we share as a species? Is the dignity that we cling to nothing but self-delusion, masking from ourselves this single truth: that each one of us is capable of being reduced to an insect, a ravening beast, a lump of meat? To be degraded, damaged, slaughtered - is this the essential fate of humankind, one which history has confirmed as inevitable? (...) I never let myself forget that every single person I meet is a member of this human race. And that includes you, professor, listening to this testimony. As it includes myself.

You’re not like me, Seong-hee. You believe in a divine being, and in this thing we call humanity. You never did manage to win me over. I could never believe in the existence of a being who watches over us with consummate love. I couldn’t even make it through the Lord’s Prayer without the words drying up in my throat. Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. I forgive no one, and no one forgives me.

But I don't have a map for whatever world lies beyond death. I don't know whether there, too, there are meetings and partings, whether we still have faces and voices, hearts with the capacity for joy as well as sorrow.

Is it true that human beings are fundamentally cruel? Is the experience of cruelty the only thing we share as a species? Is the dignity that we cling to nothing but self-delusion, masking from ourselves this single truth: that each one of us is capable of being reduced to an insect, a ravening beast, a lump of meat? To be degraded, damaged, slaughtered – is this the essential fate of humankind, one which history has confirmed as inevitable?

I think of the festering wound in my side. Of the bullet that tore in there. The strange chill, the seemingly blunt force, of that initial impact, That instantly became a lump of fire churning my insides, Of the hole it made in my other side, where it flew out and tugged my hot blood behind it. Of the barrel it was blasted out of. Of the smooth trigger. Of the eye that had me in it's sights. Of the eyes of the one who gave the order to fire.

Han Kang was born in 1970 in South Korea. She is the author of The Vegetarian, winner of the International Booker Prize, as well as Human Acts, The White Book, and Greek Lessons. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2024.

Even after I'd lost so much blood that my heart finally stopped, the blood had continued to drain from my body, leaving the skin of my face as thin and transparent as writing paper. How strange, to see my own eyes shuttered in that blood-leached face.

She had no faith in humanity. The look in someone's eyes, the beliefs they espoused, the eloquence with which they did so, were, she knew, no guarantee of anything She knew that the only life left to her was one hemmed in by niggling doubts and cold questions.

She had no faith in humanity. The look in someone's eyes, the beliefs they espoused, the eloquence with which they did so, were, she knew, no guarantee of anything. She knew that the only life left to her was one hemmed in by niggling doubts and cold questions.

Yearning to be taller. To be able to do forty push-ups in a row. For the time when I would hold a woman in my arms. That first woman who would permit such a liberty, whose face I didn't yet know, how I longed to extend my trembling fingers to the outer edge of her heart.

Is it possible to bear witness to the fact that I ended up despising my own body, the very physical stuff of my self? That I will fully destroy the warmth, any affection whose intensity was more than I could bear, and ran away? To somewhere colder, somewhere safer. Purely to stay alive.

The dream grows cruel as you move closer to wakefulness. Sleep grows thin, becomes brittle as writing paper, and eventually crumbles away. In the quiet corners of your conscious mind, memories are waiting. What they call forth cannot strictly be called nightmares.” Han Kang - Human Acts

it was as that strange, vivid night was drawing to a close, as the faint blue light of dawn had begun to seep into the sky's black ink, that i suddenly thought of you, dong-ho. yes, you'd been there with me, that day. until something like a cold cudgel had suddenly slammed into my side. until i collapsed like a rag doll. until my arms flung themselves up in mute alarm, amid the cacophony of footsteps drumming against the tarmac, ear-splitting gunfire. until i felt the warm spread of my own blood moving up over my shoulder, the back of my neck. until then, you were with me.

I would have run away. Had it been this woman and not Jeong-dae who toppled over in front of you, still you would have run away. Even if it had been one of your brothers, your father, your mother, still you would have run away. You look round at the old man. You don’t ask him if this is his granddaughter. You wait, patiently, for him to speak when he’s ready. There will be no forgiveness. You look into his eyes, which are flinching from the sight laid out in front of them as though it is the most appalling thing in all this world. There will be no forgiveness. Least of all for me.

My sister's soul, like mine, must still be lingering somewhere; but where? Now there were no such things as bodies for us; presumably physical proximity was no longer necessary for the two of us to meet. But without bodies, how would we know each other? Would I still recognize my sister as a shadow?

I want to see their faces, to hover above their sleeping eyelids like a guttering flame, to slip inside their dreams, spend the nights flaring in through their forehead, their eyelids. Until their nightmares are filled with my eyes, my eyes as the blood drains out. Until they hear my voice asking, demanding, why.

At the time, you were more closely acquainted than most with brutalized corpses, yet there have only been a handful of times in the past twenty-odd years when your dreams have been vivid with blood. Rather, your nightmares tend to be cold, silent affairs. Scenes from which the blood has dried without a trace, and the bones have weathered into ash.

At the time, death seemed as though it would be something refreshing, like slipping on that clean new uniform. If life was the summer that had just gone by, if life was a body sullied with sweat and bloody pus, clotted seconds that refused to pass, if life was a mouthful of sour bean sprouts that only served to intensify the hunger pangs, then perhaps death would be like a clean brushstroke, erasing all such things in a single sweep.

The decisive factor dominating the morality of the crowd has not yet been clearly identified. One point of interest is the emergence in situ of a particular ethical fluctuation separate from the moral standard of the individuals who constitute the crowd. Certain crowds do not blench at the prospect of looting, murder, and rape, while on the other hand, others display a level of courage and altruism which those making up that same crowd would have had difficulty in achieving as individuals. The author argues that, rather than this latter type of crowd being made up of especially noble individuals, that nobility which is a fundamental human attribute is able to manifest itself through borrowing strength from the crowd; also, similarly, that the former case is one in which humanity’s essential barbarism is exacerbated not by the especially barbaric nature of any of the individuals involved, but through that magnification which occurs naturally in crowds.

Looking at that boy's life, what is this thing we call a soul? Just some non-existent 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 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 shattered that we proved we had souls . That what we really were was humans made of glass.

I no longer felt fifteen. Thirty-five, forty-five ; these numbers came, in turn, to feel somehow insufficient. Not even sixty-five, no, nor seventy-five, seemed to encompass what I was. I wasn't JeongDae any more, the runt of the year. I wasn't Park JeongDae, whose ideas of love and fear were both bound up in the figure of his sister. A strange violence welled up within me, not spurred by the fact of my death, but simply because of the thoughts that wouldn't stop tearing through me, the things I needed to know. Who killed me, who killed my sister, and why. The more of myself I devoted to these questions, the firmer this new strength within me became. The ceaseless flow of blood, blood that flowed from a place without eyes or cheeks, darkened, thickened, into a vicious treacle ooze.

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. It’s possible that the kids who stayed behind at the Provincial Office that day experienced something similar. Perhaps they would have considered even death a fair exchange for that jewel of conscience. But no such certainty is possible now. Kids crouching beneath the windows, fumbling with their guns and complaining that they were hungry, asking if it was okay 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?

The door leading back to that summer has been slammed shut; you've made sure of that. But that means that the way is also closed that might have led back to the time before. There is no way back to the world before the torture. No way back to the world before the massacre.

(Blurb) Throughout Human Acts the ghost memory of the boy Dong-Ho wanders, refusing to disappear, and so in turn other characters refuse to stop asking 'Why?' Why does power exert itself with brutality? Why does the state silence the enquiries of the bereaved?Why does remembrance pose such a threat to the powerful?

You, a human being just like me

بعض الذكريات لا تشفى أبداً. فبدلاً من أن تتلاشى مع مرور الوقت، تصبح تلك الذكريات الشيء الوحيد الذي يبقى حين يمَّحي كل شيء آخر.

في السابق إمتلكنا روحاً، نوعاً من الزجاج غير قابل للكسر. حقيقة صلبة و واضحة لدرجة تبدو معها أنها مصنوعة أيضاً من الزجاج. لذا حين أفكر في الأمر، أُدرك أننا لم نتثبت من إمتلاكنا روحاً إلا عندما تحطمنا. وقتها فقط تأكدنا أننا كنا بشراً حقاً. بشراً مصنوعين من زجاج".

هل مصير الجنس البشري الذي أكد التاريخ حتميته هو أن يُذَلَّ و يُدَمَّر و يُذبَح؟ " .

ألم تُرق الدماء بما فيه الكفاية؟ كيف يمكننا التغاضي بهذه البساطة عن كل تلك الدماء؟ أرواح الراحلين تراقبنا. عيونهم مفتوحة على إتساعها".

Now do you understand? The kids in this photo aren’t lying side by side because their corpses were lined up like that after they were killed. It’s because they were walking in a line. They were walking in a straight line, with both arms in the air, just like we’d told them to.

Is it true that human beings are fundamentally cruel? Is the experience of cruelty the only thing we share as a species? Is the dignity that we cling to nothing but self-delusion, masking from ourselves this single truth: that each one of us is capable of being reduced to an insect, a ravening beast, a lump of meat? To be degraded, damaged, slaughtered—is this the essential fate of humankind, one that history has confirmed as inevitable?

Some memories never heal. Rather than fading with the passage of time, those memories become the only things that are left behind when all else is abraded.

Jeong-dae, who nonchalantly slid the blackboard cleaner into his book bag. ‘What’re you taking that for?’ ‘To give to my sister.’ ‘What’s she going to do with it?’ ‘Well, she keeps talking about it. It’s her main memory of middle school.’ ‘A blackboard cleaner? Must have been a pretty boring time.’ ‘No, it’s just there was a story connected with it. It was April Fool’s Day, and the kids in her class covered the entire blackboard with writing, for a prank - you know, because the teacher would have to spend ages getting it all off before he could start the lesson. But when he came in and saw it he just yelled, “Who’s classroom monitor this week?” - and it was my sister. The rest of the class carried on with the lesson while she stood out in the corridor, dangling the cloth out of the window and beating it with a stick to bash the chalk dust out. It is funnv, though, isn’t it? Two years at middle school, and that’s what she remembers most.

Why are we walking in the dark, let's go over there, where the flowers are blooming.

When a living person looks at a dead person, mightn’t the person’s soul also be there by its body’s side, looking down at its own face?

A soul doesn’t have a body, so how can it be watching us?

You dummy, what would a ghost need hands for?

Before, they’d tortured us in order to extract the particulars of actual crimes. Now, all they wanted was a false confession, so that our names could be slotted neatly into the script they had already devised.

I received a nine-year sentence, and Kim Jin-su was given seven years. Of course, those terms were meaningless. The military authorities continued to release us in batches, even those who’d been sentenced to capital punishment or life imprisonment, up until Christmas the following year. These releases were always officially justified as taking place “on amnesty.” It was almost a tacit acknowledgment of the absurdity of the charges.

Te esperan en silencio los recuerdos, aquellos que te hacen darte cuenta de que las pesadillas no son nada comparadas con la realidad.